Hourly

Get a Slack alert when PostHog sign-ups dip

If an hour's sign-ups are 30% below the same hour last week, you know before the day is over.

Runs: Hourly
Apps: PostHog
AI: Not needed
Access: query:read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every hour, count sign-ups in PostHog for the last hour and message me in Slack if they're 30% or more below the same hour last week.

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

Product metrics rarely fall off a cliff in a way a person happens to notice. A signup form breaks after Tuesday's deployment, an error rate doubles after a release, or the checkout page stops loading in one browser. The charts bend slowly at first, and by the time someone opens PostHog and sees the gap, hours of lost signups or user-facing errors have piled up, along with a pile of support tickets.

Every hour, a query pulls recent counts of signups or errors from PostHog. The result is compared with the value stored from earlier checks, and if a metric moves beyond the range you set, a message is posted to Slack with the metric, the old figure and the new one. When everything looks normal nothing is sent, so a message in the channel always means something moved.

It helps small engineering teams without dedicated monitoring staff, and for growth teams whose month depends on signups staying healthy.

What you get out of it

Broken signups found in hours, not days
A form that stops working costs money for every hour it stays broken. An hourly comparison against recent values limits the damage to a morning instead of a long weekend of lost registrations.
Error spikes are tied to the release
When the alert lands soon after a deployment, the likely cause is obvious. Rolling back or patching quickly protects users and keeps the support queue from filling with the same complaint over and over.
Quiet unless something truly moved
Messages appear only when a metric leaves its normal range. That keeps the channel readable and makes each alert worth opening, rather than training the team to mute yet another noisy integration.
Basic cover without a monitoring team
Small companies cannot afford someone watching dashboards all day. A simple hourly check on the few numbers that matter provides a safety net that a busy founder or lead engineer can actually maintain.
A rough timeline for postmortems
The time of each alert gives a starting point when reviewing an incident. Teams can see how long a problem lasted before anyone reacted, and use that gap to decide whether checks should run more often.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every hour, ClickRuntime counts sign-ups in PostHog for the hour that just ended.
It compares that with the same hour last week.
If this hour is 30% or more lower, a message goes to your Slack channel with both counts.

Before it runs live

Connect PostHog

What you get

RunsHourly

Get a Slack alert when PostHog sign-ups diptoday, 9:00Succeeded

Slack · #growthSign-ups down 38%: 18 in the last hour vs 29 the same hour last week.

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 PostHog 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.

metric_anomaly_alert.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, notify

PROJECT_ID = 12345

def hogql(query):
    resp = http.post(f"https://us.posthog.com/api/projects/{PROJECT_ID}/query/",
                     headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('POSTHOG_API_KEY')}"},
                     json={"query": {"kind": "HogQLQuery", "query": query}})
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json()["results"]

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    (now, week_ago), = hogql("""
        SELECT countIf(timestamp > now() - INTERVAL 1 HOUR),
               countIf(timestamp BETWEEN now() - INTERVAL 169 HOUR AND now() - INTERVAL 168 HOUR)
        FROM events WHERE event = 'user signed up' AND timestamp > now() - INTERVAL 169 HOUR
    """)
    if week_ago and now <= week_ago * 0.7:
        notify.slack(f"Sign-ups down {1 - now / week_ago:.0%}: {now} in the last hour vs {week_ago} "
                     "the same hour last week.", channel="#growth")
    return {"last_hour": now, "week_ago": week_ago}

FAQ

Common questions

How does it decide a movement is large?

You set the rule, for example a fall of thirty percent compared with the typical value for that hour, or errors above a fixed count. Give your AI assistant the numbers that suit your traffic and review the rule before it takes effect.

Will quiet overnight hours cause false alarms?

They can, because small numbers swing widely. Comparing with the same hour on earlier days, or setting a minimum count before an alert is allowed to fire, removes most false alarms during low-traffic periods such as weekends.

Can several metrics be watched in one run?

Yes. Signups, errors and any other counts can be queried together, and each is judged separately. The Slack message names the metric that moved and by how much, so the right person can start looking at the right dashboard.

What permissions does it need?

query: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