On a schedule

Send subscribers a short AI-written email on their chosen topic

Every morning, each active subscriber in your Airtable base gets a short email written for their topic, sent from your Gmail.

Runs: On a schedule
Apps: Airtable, Gmail
AI: Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access: Airtable read+write; Gmail gmail.send

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every morning, for each active subscriber in my Airtable Subscribers table, write a short email on their topic and send it from my Gmail, then update their last-sent date.

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 language tutor wants to send students a short daily lesson: an idiom, a grammar point, a few words on their chosen theme. Writing a separate email for travel, business and food learners every morning is not realistic alongside teaching.

Keeping subscribers and their topics in Airtable and having each email written fresh for them turns a list into a personal daily touchpoint you could not keep up by hand.

What you get out of it

Each subscriber gets their own topic
Business learners get business vocabulary, travellers get travel phrases. Nobody reads content that is not for them.
Your list lives in Airtable
Add, pause or change a subscriber's topic by editing a row; the next morning's email follows.
Sent from your own address
Emails come from your Gmail, so replies reach you and the relationship stays personal.
A record of what was sent
The last-sent date on each row shows who is active and stops anyone getting two emails in one day.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every morning ClickRuntime reads the active subscribers in your Airtable table.
It skips anyone who already received an email today.
AI writes a short email for each subscriber on their chosen topic.
The email is sent from your Gmail and the subscriber's last-sent date is updated in Airtable.

Before it runs live

Connect Airtable
Connect Google through your own Google app (a one-time, 10-minute setup), so it works with your own Gmail

What you get

RunsOn a schedule

Send subscribers a short AI-written email on their chosen topictoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Daily lessonToday's business idiom: "move the needle", to make a noticeable difference. Example: The Acme campaign really moved the needle on sign-ups.

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 Airtable and Gmail 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.

email_subscription_service_from_airtable.pyexample

import base64
from datetime import date
from email.message import EmailMessage
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, ai

URL = "https://api.airtable.com/v0/appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/Subscribers"
STYLE = "Write one English idiom for this topic, its meaning and two example sentences. Under 120 words, friendly tone."

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    at = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('AIRTABLE_API_KEY')}"}
    g = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('google', 'work')}"}
    today = date.today().isoformat()
    subs = http.get(URL, headers=at, params={"filterByFormula": f"AND({{Active}}, {{Last sent}} != '{today}')"}).json()["records"]
    sent = 0
    for s in subs:
        f = s["fields"]
        body = ai.generate(f"{STYLE}\nTopic: {f['Topic']}", max_output_tokens=300).text
        m = EmailMessage(); m["To"] = f["Email"]; m["Subject"] = f"Today's {f['Topic']} idiom"; m.set_content(body)
        http.post("https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages/send", headers=g,
                  json={"raw": base64.urlsafe_b64encode(m.as_bytes()).decode()})
        http.patch(f"{URL}/{s['id']}", headers=at, json={"fields": {"Last sent": today}})
        sent += 1
    return {"sent": sent}

FAQ

Common questions

How does someone subscribe?

Any form that adds a row to your Airtable table works, including Airtable's own forms. The row needs an email, a topic and an active tick box.

Can I control the style of the emails?

Yes. You describe the tone, length and format once, for example 'one idiom, its meaning and two example sentences', and every email follows it.

Can subscribers get emails weekly instead of daily?

Yes. A frequency field on the row can set daily or weekly, and the last-sent date decides who is due.

What permissions does it need?

Airtable read+write; Gmail gmail.send. 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 (on a schedule). 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.

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