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A weekly competitor digest that stays quiet when there is nothing to say, and asks before it emails anyone.

We will build a Weekly Competitor Digest: it researches, decides whether there is anything worth sending, writes it up, waits for you to approve, then emails it.

It is deliberately not the simplest possible workflow. It includes a condition and an approval because those are the two things that separate a workflow you can leave running from one you have to babysit.

Build it with a Manual trigger first and put it on a schedule at the end. Testing a scheduled workflow by waiting until Monday is not a good use of your week.

Create it

Workflows in the left rail of the Agents area, then New workflow.

Name: Weekly Competitor Digest

Description: Researches competitor announcements, and emails a digest after review.

Leave the trigger on Manually for now.

Step 1, research (Agent)

Add step, choose Agent, name it research.

The name matters: you will refer to it later as {{steps.research.output}}.

Choose Define here and write instructions:

Search the web for announcements, product launches, pricing changes and
notable coverage from these companies in the last 7 days:
[list your three competitors]

For each thing you find, give: the company, what happened, the date, and
the source link.

If you find nothing genuinely new for a company, say so for that company
rather than padding with old news or general background.

If you find nothing at all for any of them, reply with exactly:
NOTHING TO REPORT

Give it the Web Search tool and nothing else.

That last instruction is the important one. It gives the next step something unambiguous to test.

Step 2, is there anything to say? (Condition)

Add step, choose Condition, name it anything-to-report.

Source: {{steps.research.output}}
Check type: Rule
Condition: Does not contain
Value: NOTHING TO REPORT
If the check fails: skip to End of workflow

A rule, not "ask the model", because the question is mechanical. Cheaper, instant, and it cannot change its mind.

This is what makes the workflow safe to leave running. On a quiet week it stops here and nobody gets an empty email.

Step 3, write it up (Agent)

Add step, Agent, name it writeup.

Turn the research below into a short internal digest.

Format:
- One-line summary of the week.
- One bullet per competitor, with the source link.
- A final line: "What this means for us", at most two sentences.

Keep it under 300 words. Be plain. Do not speculate beyond what the
sources say, and if something is a rumour, label it as one.

Research:
{{steps.research.output}}

Insert that reference with / rather than typing it.

Step 4, check it before it goes out (Approval)

Add step, choose Approval.

Approvers: leave empty, so the owner and editors can approve
Message: Check the digest reads correctly and the links work before it goes to the marketing list.

Write a real message. Approvers see it, and "please approve" tells them nothing about what to look for.

Step 5, send it (Action)

Add step, choose Action, and pick your email tool.

To: the list address
Subject: Competitor digest, week of [date]
Body: {{steps.writeup.output}}

Note the Makes a change badge on this tool. That is why the approval sits directly above it.

Save and run it

Save, then Run workflow.

Watch the run. Step 1 takes a while (it is searching), step 2 should pass, step 3 writes, and then it stops at Waiting for your approval.

Read the digest. Approve it and the email goes. Reject it and the run ends without sending.

Test the quiet week

This is the test people skip, and it is the one that matters.

Temporarily edit step 1's instructions to end with Reply with exactly: NOTHING TO REPORT regardless of what you find. Save and run.

The run should reach step 2 and skip to the end. Steps 3 to 5 show as skipped, and no email goes out.

Now put step 1 back. You have just proved the workflow will stay quiet rather than emailing everyone an empty digest on a slow week, which is the thing that would otherwise get it switched off after a fortnight.

Put it on a schedule

Back to the trigger at the top. Change it to On a schedule:

Preset: Mondays at 9:00
Timezone: where the people who read it are

Save. The trigger shows its next run.

Approval steps still work: on Monday morning the run pauses and waits for you.

What to watch in the first month

Check the run history weekly at first. You are looking for runs that failed, and for runs that completed but produced something thin.

If you approve every single time without changing anything, the approval step may not be earning its place. Consider removing it, but only once you have seen a month of good output.

If you reject often, the fix is in step 1 or step 3's instructions, not in the approving. Tighten the brief.

Extending it

Add a condition using Ask the model to check whether anything looks urgent, and branch to a different, shorter alert.
Point step 1 at a collection of your own market research as well as the web.
Swap the inline agent in step 3 for a saved agent that already knows your house style, so the digest matches everything else you publish.

Steps for the full detail on each kind, including running once per item in a list.
Triggers to run this from an incoming email or a new document instead of a clock.

Tutorial: your first workflow