Daily

Get a summary when an important Doc changes

When a Doc you rely on changes, you get a short summary of what's different.

Runs: Daily
Apps: Google Docs
AI: Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access: read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: check my Policy doc every day at 9am and email me a summary of what changed since yesterday.

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

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

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

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A founder shares a pricing proposal Doc with three advisers, and over a weekend they edit it. On Monday she opens it to find sentences rewritten, a table moved and a comment thread that conflicts with another. Google Docs has version history, but comparing it is slow, and she cannot tell what mattered. Often, a key number changes and nobody mentions it. The change that mattered is the one nobody mentions.

Each day, ClickRuntime fetches the text of the Doc you are watching and compares it with the copy it stored the day before. If anything changed, its built-in AI writes a summary of what was added, removed or rewritten, and emails it to you. Unchanged days produce no email.

Legal teams, editors and project leads use it to watch shared documents without opening them daily.

What you get out of it

You learn what changed without hunting
A short summary of additions and deletions saves you from comparing versions. You open the Doc only when the summary says something that deserves your attention. Your attention stays on the edits that matter, and the rest of the Doc can be ignored with confidence.
Quiet edits to key numbers are caught
A price, a date or a clause altered by a collaborator is mentioned in the summary. Spotting it the next morning is far better than discovering it in a signed copy.
Works for documents you do not own
If you can read the Doc, you can watch it. Contracts and policies kept by other teams can be monitored, so you hear about edits that affect you without asking for notifications.
No email when nothing happened
Days with no changes are silent, so the summary arrives only when it is useful. That keeps people from learning to ignore it, which is the usual fate of daily notifications.
A running record of how a document evolved
The summaries in your inbox are a timeline of edits. When someone asks how a policy changed between March and June, you can find the answer in your own email.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every day ClickRuntime reads the full text of your important Google Doc, such as a policy.
It compares it with the copy it saved last time.
If something changed, AI describes the changes in plain English.
You get an email with that summary, and the new version is saved for the next check.

Before it runs live

Connect Google Docs

What you get

RunsDaily

Get a summary when an important Doc changestoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Policy doc changedThe refund window was extended from 14 to 30 days, and a new section on data retention was added.

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
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 Google Docs 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.

doc_change_summary.pyexample

from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
import difflib
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, state, ai, notify

DOC_ID = "policy-doc-id"

def doc_text(doc):
    return "".join(r["textRun"]["content"] for el in doc["body"]["content"] if "paragraph" in el
                   for r in el["paragraph"]["elements"] if "textRun" in r)

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    docs = build("docs", "v1", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
    text = doc_text(docs.documents().get(documentId=DOC_ID).execute())
    before = state.get("text")
    state.set("text", text)
    if before is None or before == text:
        return {"changed": False}
    diff = "\n".join(difflib.unified_diff(before.splitlines(), text.splitlines(), lineterm="", n=0))[:12000]
    summary = ai.generate("Summarise what changed in this policy document, in plain language:\n" + diff,
                          max_output_tokens=400).text
    notify.email_me("Policy doc changed", summary)
    return {"changed": True}

FAQ

Common questions

Does it notice font and layout differences or only wording?

It compares the text content of the Doc, so changes to wording, numbers and structure are caught. Purely visual changes such as font size or color are not reflected. For most reviews, that is what matters, since the text carries the meaning.

Can it watch several documents at once?

Yes. Each document is stored and compared separately, and the email can name which Doc changed. Teams often watch a handful, such as a contract, a policy and a roadmap, and get one message listing every Doc that moved.

How does it cope with a Doc that is busy all day?

A Doc edited all day produces a summary of everything since the last run, which can be long. If that is too noisy, switch to a weekly run, or ask for the summary to focus on specific sections such as pricing.

What permissions does it need?

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 runs (daily). 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.

On a scheduleAI