Every 15 minutes

Get a summary of each new note or document

When a text, Markdown or PDF file is added, you get the key points by email.

Runs: Every 15 minutes
Apps: Dropbox
AI: Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access: files.metadata.read, files.content.read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: when a new .txt, .md or .pdf file is added to my Dropbox /Notes folder, email me a 5-bullet summary with the file name in the subject.

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

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

Teams keep meeting notes, reports and contracts in a shared Dropbox folder, and people add new files faster than anyone can read them. A manager returns from leave to forty new documents, a founder wants to know what a long PDF says before a call, and a researcher needs to triage a folder of papers. Opening each file takes minutes, and the important ones are not necessarily the ones at the top.

Every 15 minutes the automation checks for new files, downloads them, extracts the text and has ClickRuntime's built-in AI draft a short summary, which is emailed to you. You see what each new document is about before deciding whether to open it. No separate AI account or key is needed.

Managers, researchers, legal teams and anyone who receives more documents than they can read will find it useful.

What you get out of it

Triage a folder in a minute
A short summary for each file lets you decide what to read in full. That takes minutes where opening forty documents one by one would take an afternoon, and you still end up reading the right ones.
Key points are not buried
A summary pulls out the main decisions, figures and actions from a long document. You catch the important line that would otherwise be on page nine of a report that you were never going to read all the way through.
Faster response to what arrives
Because summaries arrive within about 15 minutes, you can react to an important contract or report the same day it is uploaded, instead of discovering it at the end of the week when the window has closed.
Context before a meeting
If someone adds a document an hour before a call, the summary gives you enough to ask sensible questions. You are not caught reading it for the first time while the meeting is already underway.
A searchable digest of your folder
The emails build a running record of what was added and what it said. That is far easier to search than a list of file names, which rarely tell you what is actually inside a document.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every 15 minutes, ClickRuntime checks your Dropbox folder for new notes and documents.
It downloads each new file and reads the text.
AI writes a short bullet-point summary of what it says.
You get the summary by email, with the file name in the subject line.

Before it runs live

Connect Dropbox

What you get

RunsEvery 15 minutes

Get a summary of each new note or documenttoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Summary: acme-kickoff-notes.md• Acme wants the pilot live by Dec 1 • Two admins on their side, SSO required

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. 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.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Dropbox steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

ai_summary_of_new_documents_dropbox.pyexample

import io, json
from pypdf import PdfReader
from clickruntime import on_trigger, report_fetched, state, notify, http, credentials, ai

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    auth = {"Authorization": "Bearer " + credentials.connection("dropbox", "main")}
    cursor = state.get("cursor") or http.post("https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/list_folder/get_latest_cursor", headers=auth, json={"path": "/Notes"}).json()["cursor"]
    page = http.post("https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/list_folder/continue", headers=auth, json={"cursor": cursor}).json()
    files = [e for e in page["entries"] if e[".tag"] == "file" and e["name"].lower().endswith((".txt", ".md", ".pdf"))]
    report_fetched(len(files))
    if not files:
        return {"summary": "No new notes"}
    for f in files:
        raw = http.post("https://content.dropboxapi.com/2/files/download", headers={**auth, "Dropbox-API-Arg": json.dumps({"path": f["path_lower"]})}).content
        text = "\n".join(p.extract_text() or "" for p in PdfReader(io.BytesIO(raw)).pages) if f["name"].lower().endswith(".pdf") else raw.decode("utf-8", "ignore")
        summary = ai.generate(f"Summarise this document in exactly 5 bullet points.\n\n{text[:12000]}", max_output_tokens=300).text
        notify.email_me(f"Summary: {f['name']}", summary)
    state.set("cursor", page["cursor"])
    return {"summarised": len(files)}

FAQ

Common questions

Which file types can be summarized?

Text-based files such as PDFs, Word documents and plain text work best, because their text can be extracted cleanly by the automation. Scanned images or files containing only pictures may produce little or nothing to summarize.

Does it read every file in my Dropbox?

No. It watches only the folder you choose and processes just the files added since the last check. Files elsewhere in your Dropbox are never opened or downloaded, so you can keep private material outside the watched folder.

How long can the documents be?

Very long documents may be summarized from their beginning or in parts, so the summary captures the main points rather than every detail. For a critical contract, treat the summary as a guide and read the document itself.

What permissions does it need?

files.metadata.read, files.content.read. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Every 15 minutesAI