A story in Tines is where you build automations and agents. It’s where you connect actions and tools together to complete a specific process, like monitoring alerts, sending notifications, or gathering data from tools you use every day.
A story resembles a flowchart. It shows the steps that need to happen in a specific order. The difference is that a story is a working flow. Each component performs a task, and each connection between them represents data flowing from one to the next. When a story runs, every connected component works together in sequence, creating a clear chain of events.
Stories make automations and agents visual and logical, so you can easily see what’s happening and where.
ℹ️Info
The essential story segments
A story consists of three main segments:
Kickoff
Every story starts with an initiating action or tool; something that says "it's time to run!" This could be:
A Webhook action receiving data from another service.
A Receive Email action detecting a new message.
A scheduled HTTP Request action.
A Page where users submit information.
Actions and tools
Actions and tools are the individual steps in your story that perform specific tasks. Each is like a specialized worker focused on a single, specific task within your workflow.
Events
Events are the magic that connect your actions and tools together. When one of these components completes a task, it creates an event that contains all the information it has gathered or processed. This event flows to the next component, carrying valuable data along the way.
Story example: From idea to reality
Let's walk through what a simple story might look like:
A Webhook action receives data from an external tool, like a monitoring alert.
A Trigger action evaluates that data and decides whether to continue.
A Send Email action notifies your team if something needs attention.
The visual:
An example of a simple story.
Each action builds upon the one before it, creating a self-contained workflow that runs automatically whenever the first component is initiated. This chain is what makes Tines' stories both powerful and easy to reason through. Every story tells a logical, visual “story” of your automation or agent.