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ClickRuntime

Automate OpenAI

Connect your own OpenAI key for the jobs that go beyond text: generating images, transcribing and translating audio, turning text into speech and reading receipts or screenshots with vision. It also watches your API bill, with a spend alert and a weekly cost breakdown by model and project. Ask your AI assistant for what you want, check the plan before it starts, and it will handle the rest on schedule or whenever a file arrives.

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Try asking

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every Monday at 9am, generate 3 square images for this week's topics (spring sale, new hiking boots, customer story) in flat pastel illustration style, and email me the links.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Ideas

What you can automate in OpenAI

Images made to order, voice notes turned into text and action items, audio in another language translated, spoken MP3s from text, and a clear view of what the API is costing you. These are ready-made starting points. Anything else you can describe works too.
Weekly

Generate weekly social images with OpenAI

Each week a set of images for your planned topics, made in your style, arrives in your inbox as links.

See how it works
The moment it happens

Turn voice notes into text and action items

Any recording you send to your link comes back as a transcript, a short summary and a list of to-dos.

See how it works
The moment it happens

Pull the details out of receipt photos

Photos or screenshots you send are read and returned as tidy fields, like merchant, date and total.

See how it works
The moment it happens

Translate recordings into English

Audio in another language comes back as an English transcript, with an optional spoken version.

See how it works
The moment it happens

Turn text into an MP3

Text you post to a link is read out by an OpenAI voice and the audio file is emailed to you.

See how it works
On a schedule

Get warned when OpenAI spend runs high

An email on mornings when the previous day's API cost went over your limit, broken down by project.

See how it works
On a schedule

Get a weekly OpenAI cost breakdown

A Monday table of last week's tokens and cost per model and project, compared with the week before.

See how it works
Daily

Get a morning digest summarised on your own key

Every day new items from the feeds you follow are summarised with your OpenAI model and emailed, with no repeats.

See how it works Your own logic

Any other automation you can describe in words

Your own rules, schedule and AI steps with OpenAI, plus any other app. Describe it and your assistant builds it.

See how to build your own

Build your own

Build any OpenAI automation you can describe

The ideas above are ready-made starting points, not a fixed list. Describe what OpenAI should do in your own words, with your conditions, other apps or an AI step, and your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

For example, ask your assistant

Every day, check my OpenAI usage and alert me if today's spend is more than double my 7 day average.

When a new row is added to my Google Sheet of product names, use OpenAI to write a description and fill it in the next column.

When a support email arrives in Gmail, use OpenAI to draft a reply from my FAQ page in Notion, save it as a Gmail draft, and post the subject to Slack.

Beyond chat

Have OpenAI work when you're not in the chat

Connecting OpenAI to ChatGPT or Claude lets you ask about it while you chat. ClickRuntime handles the part that should happen on its own: checks on a schedule and actions on each new event, set up from the same chat and running after you close it.

Setup

Connect OpenAI

OpenAI is connected with a secret API key from your own project. Your prepaid credits pay for the calls, separately from your ClickRuntime plan.

OpenAI

AI / LLM

  1. On platform.openai.com, open Settings, then your project, then API keys, and choose Create new secret key.
  2. Set permissions to All, Restricted (with access to the models or endpoints you need) or Read only.
  3. Copy the key now, as OpenAI shows it only once.
  4. Save it as a secret on Connections & secrets in the ClickRuntime dashboard. For the spend and usage reports, add an Admin key the same way.

Good to know

OpenAI limits that affect automations

  • The API needs prepaid credits, and your usage tier sets how many requests and tokens you can use per minute.
  • Audio files are limited to 25 MB per transcription request, so long recordings need splitting.
  • Spend alerts and usage reports read the Costs and Usage endpoints, which need an Admin key; a normal project key is refused for missing api.usage.read.
  • Revoking a key takes effect within seconds, but other permission changes can take up to 15 minutes to apply.

FAQ

Questions about automating OpenAI

Why connect OpenAI if ClickRuntime already includes AI?
The AI in every ClickRuntime plan handles text, which covers summaries and drafts with no key. Images, audio transcription, speech and vision need your own OpenAI key, and some people also prefer to run text jobs on their own credits.
Who pays for the OpenAI calls?
You do, from the credits on your OpenAI account. Pair the daily spend alert with these jobs if you want a cap you notice.
Can I send it files the moment I have them?
Yes. Audio, image and text jobs each get a link you can post to, and the result is emailed back once it's processed.
Does it post generated images to social media?
No. Images are stored and the links emailed to you; publishing them is left to you.
What if I belong to more than one OpenAI organization?
Tell your assistant which organization and project to use, and the requests include the matching OpenAI-Organization and OpenAI-Project headers.
Is this a OpenAI connector for ChatGPT or Claude?
Not for chatting with OpenAI data. A chat connector lets your assistant read and change OpenAI while you're in the conversation. ClickRuntime is for the work that should happen without you: you set up an automation from the chat once, and it keeps running on a schedule or on each OpenAI event.

Related pages

Keep exploring

Tell your assistant what OpenAI should do

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