Hourly

Get a Slack alert when a table gets no new rows

If today's load hasn't arrived by 9am, your data channel hears about it once.

Runs: Hourly
Apps: Snowflake
AI: Not needed
Access: read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every hour, count today's rows in the ORDERS table in Snowflake. If there are none by 9am, post one alert to #data in Slack.

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

A pipeline is supposed to load yesterday's orders into Snowflake by 6 a.m. One night the upstream export fails silently, the load runs against an empty file, and the table gets zero new rows. Nothing errors, so dashboards show a flat line and executives make decisions on stale numbers. The analyst finds out after lunch when someone asks why revenue looks odd. A missing load is not an event, so no tool warns you unless you check.

Every hour, ClickRuntime runs a count query on your table, such as rows loaded for yesterday's date, checks the result against the condition you define, and posts to Slack if the condition is met, for example zero rows or fewer than expected. A healthy load generates no message.

Data engineers and analytics teams who depend on daily loads use it as a simple freshness and volume check.

What you get out of it

Silent failures are surfaced
A pipeline that ran but loaded nothing looks successful in most schedulers. A direct check on the table's contents is the one test that reveals the problem. Because the check looks at the data itself, it catches problems that no job status would ever show.
Bad numbers do not reach executives
Catching an empty load by mid-morning means dashboards can be corrected or flagged before the weekly review, protecting trust in the data team. One awkward correction after a board meeting costs more than a year of checks.
Fixes happen sooner
An hourly check shortens the time between a failed load and a rerun, which often is just a matter of retriggering a job once the source system is back. Hourly checks also help you separate a one-time hiccup from a recurring fault.
Any condition can be monitored
The check is a query, so it can test for zero rows, a drop of more than half against last week, or nulls in a key column, not only missing data.
The team shares responsibility
Posting in Slack lets whoever is online pick it up, rather than the alert going to one engineer who might be on leave or asleep when the load fails. A channel keeps a visible record of who picked it up and how it was resolved.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every hour, ClickRuntime counts how many rows have arrived today in the Snowflake table you are watching.
Once it is past 9am and the count is still zero, it treats the load as late.
A message goes to your Slack data channel saying the table has no rows yet today.
It only sends this once per day, so the channel isn't flooded while you fix the loader.

Before it runs live

Connect Snowflake

What you get

RunsHourly

Get a Slack alert when a table gets no new rowstoday, 9:00Succeeded

Slack · #dataNo rows in ORDERS yet today (2026-10-19, 09:00). Check the loader.

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

Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Snowflake 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.

data_condition_alert_e_g_no_new_rows.pyexample

from datetime import datetime
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify

ACCOUNT = "myorg-myaccount"
WAREHOUSE = "ADMIN_WH"
TZ = ZoneInfo("America/New_York")

def sql(statement):
    resp = http.post(f"https://{ACCOUNT}.snowflakecomputing.com/api/v2/statements",
                     headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('SNOWFLAKE_PAT')}",
                              "X-Snowflake-Authorization-Token-Type": "PROGRAMMATIC_ACCESS_TOKEN"},
                     json={"statement": statement, "warehouse": WAREHOUSE, "timeout": 60})
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json()["data"]

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    now = datetime.now(TZ)
    count = int(sql("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ANALYTICS.PUBLIC.ORDERS WHERE created_at::date = CURRENT_DATE")[0][0])
    today = now.date().isoformat()
    if count == 0 and now.hour >= 9 and state.get("alerted_on") != today:
        notify.slack(f"No rows in ORDERS yet today ({today}, {now:%H:%M}). Check the loader.", channel="#data")
        state.set("alerted_on", today)
    return {"rows_today": count}

FAQ

Common questions

Will it alert every hour while the problem continues?

By default it posts whenever the condition is true, so an unresolved failure repeats hourly. You can limit it to the first occurrence, or to once every few hours, if repeated messages become noise. The choice is yours, depending on how noisy you want it to be.

Can it check more than one table?

Yes. List the tables and conditions you care about, each with its own query and threshold, and the check runs through them all in a single pass, posting one message for each failure. One run can cover your whole pipeline in one place.

What if the load is normally late on weekends?

You can build the condition to allow for that, for example skipping Saturday and Sunday or using a lower expected count. A condition that fits your real pattern avoids false alarms. This avoids false alarms that train people to ignore messages.

What permissions does it need?

read. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it runs (hourly). Checks that find nothing to do 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.

Daily