# Turn an automation on **POST /automations/{automation}/activate** Makes an automation live. Needs `sending: write`, and is a write. **This is the operation that starts sending.** Everything else about an automation describes a sequence; this installs it. From the moment it returns, Commune mails whoever the trigger names, as often as it fires, with no further request from anybody, until a person turns it off. **Every gate runs again, on the stored automation.** They ran when the graph was saved, and the repetition is deliberate: an automation can be saved by one tool and turned on by another weeks later, and in between an image can rot, a tag a step applies can be deleted, and a sending domain can fall out of verification. Each is a `422` naming what is wrong: * **the graph**, if an edge points at nothing, a path does not end, or there is a cycle; * **a condition**, if it uses a keyword outside the subset or names a path its trigger cannot produce; * **`missing_footer`**, if an email has lost its unsubscribe link or its mailing address; * **`broken_images`**, if an image in an email definitively will not load. There is no way to override this one here, unlike on an article send: an article's images are checked minutes before it goes out, and an automation's are checked once and then sent for months; * **the newsletter**, if Commune does not send its email, or it has no verified sending address. These apply only when the graph actually sends: an automation that only moves tags works on any newsletter. **It is charged to a daily cap of its own**, counted per newsletter and reported as a `429` that is not one of the `RateLimit-Policy` budgets. An activation is not a send: it installs a standing instruction. The number is also how many copies of one email a single subscriber could be made to receive from one triggering event, because each automation claims its deliveries separately. An activation that was refused costs nothing, so fixing a graph and trying again is free until it succeeds. **How many may run at once is a plan limit**, and the only `402` this operation can answer: a newsletter whose plan does not include it may have one automation `active`, and this is refused while another is running, naming how many are running and how many are allowed. Pausing one makes the same call succeed. Creating, editing, reading and archiving are not limited, so building and comparing several sequences needs no plan; only running a second one does. Turning on an automation that is already `active` succeeds and changes nothing. An `archived` one is refused: archiving ended its runs. Publishes no event. ## Servers - Production. There is no separate sandbox host. : https://api.usecommune.com (Production. There is no separate sandbox host. ) ## Authentication methods - Api key - Oauth2 ## Parameters ### Headers - **Idempotency-Key** (string) A value of your choosing naming the change this request is making. Send the same value again to retry the same request. Commune replays the answer the first attempt gave instead of making the change twice, and marks the replay with an `Idempotent-Replay: true` response header. Send a different value for a different change: a key reused for a request that differs in any way answers `409`, because replaying an answer to a question you did not ask is a wrong answer you could not detect. A UUID per change is the usual choice. Remembered for 24 hours, per credential, so two credentials choosing the same value never see each other's answers. Required, not optional. - **Commune-Version** (string) The contract version this request is written against. Every version published so far is a release date (`YYYY-MM-DD`), which is why the examples look like one, but the value is an opaque identifier: match it against the versions this API publishes rather than parsing it, because a future one may not be only a date. An unknown value answers `400` with `invalid_version`. Omitting the header pins the request to the version that was current when the API key was issued, so an integration keeps working when a newer version ships. ### Path parameters - **automation** (string(uuid)) The automation's `id`. An automation has no short id. ## Responses ### 200 The automation, live, with `activated_at` stamped. #### Body: application/json (object) - **object** (string) Always `automation`. - **id** (string(uuid)) - **newsletter** (object | null) The newsletter this automation belongs to. A `Ref` unless `newsletter` is named in `?expand=`. - **name** (string) - **status** (string) Where an automation is in its life. `draft` is where every automation starts and the only status a create can produce. `active` is the one status that sends: the engine's ingest and its claim on due work both filter on it, so nothing an automation holds reaches anybody until somebody turns it on. `paused` holds every waiting run exactly where it is. A run three days into a sequence stays on that step and resumes from it when the automation is turned on again, so a pause is instant and total rather than a drain. `archived` is what `DELETE` leaves behind. It is not sending and it is not coming back: the runs it was in the middle of are ended, because a run holding its place on a graph nobody will activate again is a subscriber stuck part way through forever. The automation and its history stay readable, which is the reason it is archived rather than deleted. - **trigger** (string) The event that starts a run. Every topic Commune publishes is a trigger, including the ones that are not about a subscriber. An automation on `article.published` can hold conditions and waits; it cannot send an email or move a tag, because there is nobody for those to act on, and saving one that tries is refused rather than left to fail once per event forever. `GET /automation-triggers` says, per topic, which properties its events carry and whether it is about a subscriber. That is what a condition can ask about. - **trigger_filter** (object | null) - **reentry** (boolean) - **steps** (array[object]) The graph. The order is the order the steps are drawn and read back in, not the order they run: follow `next`, `then` and `else` for that. - **created_at** (string(date-time)) - **updated_at** (string(date-time)) - **activated_at** (string(date-time) | null) When this automation was last turned on, or null if it never has been. It is not cleared by pausing, so it answers "has this ever sent anything". ### 400 The request was malformed, and the same request will fail the same way until it is changed. `param` names the parameter or header at fault when there is exactly one, and `allowed_values` lists what it accepts when that is a finite set. The code is `bad_request` for every case below except the last. * **A query parameter**: one the operation does not have, a value outside its set, range or format (an unparseable cursor, an unknown `expand` path or `fields` name, an identifier that is not a UUID), or a required one left out, such as `q` on a search or `newsletter` when the credential reaches more than one. * **The request body**: not JSON, not the shape the operation reads, a property it does not write, or a value of the wrong type, length or format. `param` is absent here, since the body is not a parameter, and the message names the property. * **The `Idempotency-Key` header**, on an operation that changes something: missing, or a value this API will not store. * **An unrecognised `Commune-Version`**, which answers with its own code, `invalid_version`, because it is never fixed by changing the body. #### Body: application/json (object) - **error** (object) ### 401 No credential was presented, or it is malformed, unknown, revoked or expired, or it is an access token minted for a different audience. Every one of these answers identically, down to the wording and the headers, so a refusal never confirms that a string was once real. #### Headers - **WWW-Authenticate** (string) The authentication scheme this API accepts, and where to find out how to get a credential for it. Always `Bearer realm="Commune API", resource_metadata="https://api.usecommune.com/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource"`. `resource_metadata` is the RFC 9728 pointer to this API's protected resource metadata, which names the authorization server an OAuth client should send its user to. A client holding an API key can ignore it. The header carries no `error` parameter, not even `error="invalid_token"`, because it describes what this API accepts rather than what was wrong with the credential sent, and the reasons above are deliberately indistinguishable. There is no second scheme and no query-parameter fallback, because a credential that can travel in a URL ends up in access logs and referer headers. #### Body: application/json (object) - **error** (object) ### 402 The credential is allowed to do this but the newsletter's plan does not include it. Two surfaces can answer it: **insights**, the engagement and metrics operations, which are the only reads Commune reserves the right to meter, and **writing**, every operation that changes something. Every other read stays free on every plan, so a credential refused at one of these can still read everything else. The body names the plan the newsletter is on and the plans that would work. One refusal is a feature of the paid plan rather than a charge for API access, and it answers whatever is metered: a newsletter whose plan does not include it may have **one automation active at a time**, so `POST /automations/{automation}/activate` is refused while another is running. That one is also the only `402` a client can clear on its own, by pausing the automation that is running. **This status is predictable and should not be how you discover it.** `GET /newsletters/{newsletter}/entitlements` answers the same question in advance, carrying the same plan list this puts in `allowed_values` and the same sentence it puts in `message`. Read it once at the start of a run rather than finding out in the middle of one. #### Body: application/json (object) - **error** (object) ### 403 The credential is valid but is not allowed to do this. Two codes answer with this status, and `error.code` says which. **`insufficient_scope`: it does not hold the permission.** The operation needs, say, `audience: read` on the newsletter addressed, and this credential holds less than that there. `allowed_values` carries the permission that was needed, and the message says what the credential does hold on that newsletter, because a credential granted the wrong family and a credential belonging to somebody whose standing on the team has narrowed look identical without it. The answer can differ per newsletter: the same credential may be allowed here and refused on the next one it reaches. The same code answers an operation that needs the **account permission** from a credential that does not carry it. That permission is about the person a credential belongs to rather than about any newsletter, so nothing granted on a newsletter adds up to it. It is granted on the credential itself, when a key is minted or when an authorization asks for `account:read`. And it answers a parameter the credential may send, but not with the value it sent: a filter a credential holding only `read` permissions may not use, or an `expand` path whose rows need a permission the operation does not. `param` names the parameter, and `allowed_values` carries what this credential may send instead, or is absent when it may send nothing there at all. **`forbidden`: it may not act here at all.** Either the credential does not reach the newsletter addressed, because it was never granted it or because the person it belongs to can no longer act on it, or it reaches no newsletter at all; `param` is `newsletter`, and `GET /newsletters` lists the ones it does reach. Or, on `DELETE /api-keys/{key}`, the credential named belongs to somebody else. Neither carries `allowed_values`, because there is no value to send instead. #### Body: application/json (object) - **error** (object) ### 404 No such resource, or the key is not allowed to know that it exists. Commune answers `404` rather than `403` where distinguishing the two would leak the existence of private content. #### Body: application/json (object) - **error** (object) ### 409 The request collided with something. On a write this is always the `Idempotency-Key`, in one of two ways, and the message says which. Either the key was already used for a **different** request, which is refused rather than answered with the earlier request's result. Or an earlier request using the same key has not finished, or never reported an outcome, in which case this one was not run and the key becomes usable again shortly. Nothing was changed by a request that answers this. #### Headers - **Retry-After** (integer) Seconds to wait before retrying, on the second case only. #### Body: application/json (object) - **error** (object) ### 422 The request is well formed and every value in it is legal, and the state of what it addresses refuses it anyway. The message says what about that state is in the way. #### Body: application/json (object) - **error** (object) ### 429 Too many requests. Back off and retry after the interval named by the `Retry-After` response header. Usually one of the budgets in `RateLimit-Policy` ran out, and the `RateLimit-*` headers on this response say which and when it resets. This operation can also reach a **daily send limit**, which is counted apart from those budgets and is not reported in them: how many times an article may be dispatched to a newsletter's whole list in a day, or how many test copies a credential may send to addresses it names. Neither counts recipients, so the size of a send is never what refuses it. When one of these is what answered, the message says so by name and `Retry-After` is measured in hours rather than seconds, which is how to tell the two apart. #### Headers - **Retry-After** (integer) Seconds to wait before retrying. #### Body: application/json (object) - **error** (object) ### 500 Something failed inside Commune. The request may be retried. #### Body: application/json (object) - **error** (object) [Powered by Bump.sh](https://bump.sh)