Grok Automations: How xAI's New Scheduled Tasks and Email Triggers Work

How it works

Scheduling options

Users can set jobs to run on a calendar recurrence — for example, daily, hourly, weekly on chosen weekdays, monthly, or on a custom cadence . You can also set a one-time run at a specific local time .

Email trigger conditions

An automation can fire when an incoming email matches filters based on the sender, recipient, or subject line . This means an inbox event — a customer request, invoice, security notice, or project update — can start work immediately rather than waiting for the next scheduled check .

How each run is stored and managed

Every execution of an automation becomes a conversation entry in the user's chat history . There is also a dedicated run history for viewing past outputs and a template system for reusing job configurations . Users can create and manage multiple automations from within the Grok interface. Results are reported back via app notification or email .

Tiered access requirements

Launch-day reports indicate Automations is a paid-tier feature. Multiple pricing sources confirm that Grok's consumer plans in July 2026 are:

xAI has not published a detailed feature matrix explicitly listing Automations in each tier as of launch day, but the strongest available evidence places Automations behind the SuperGrok subscription (≈$30/month) . Free-tier users are unlikely to have access given the rate-limit and model restrictions. The official Grok demo video also labels email-triggered automations as a SuperGrok feature .

How this builds on the earlier Grok Tasks tool

• Grok Tasks (launched earlier in 2025–2026) was a simpler scheduling feature: users could save a prompt and set it to run once, daily, on chosen weekdays, or monthly . It lacked email triggers, run-history management, and template reuse.
• Automations expands Tasks in three key ways:
  1. New trigger type — email-based triggers (sender, recipient, subject), not just calendar scheduling .
  2. Richer job definition — users can attach files, choose a mode, and add connectors or "Skills" when creating a job .
  3. Full lifecycle management — dedicated run history, templates, and notification delivery replace Tasks' basic "run and forget" model .

xAI appears to be retiring the standalone Tasks feature and folding its scheduling capability into the broader Automations system .