An AI agent that works while you sleep

Key points

• Routines are standing jobs on a schedule, like a Monday summary or a daily briefing, and a routine with nothing new to say stays quiet.
• Watches keep an eye on a web page and tell you once when something you care about happens, such as a price falling below a number.
• Triggers start a task when something happens: an email arrives, an issue is opened, a webhook fires.
• Every morning Nox can speak first, with a short brief and up to three ideas worth doing today.
• Work nobody started has its own daily limit, five dollars by default, and Settings shows what it was spent on.

The best help is the kind you don't have to ask for every time. You shouldn't need to remember to check a price every morning, or to open your sales dashboard every Monday. With routines, watches and triggers, Nox, the agent on nox.cool, does those jobs on its own and only taps you on the shoulder when it matters.

#What can Nox do on its own?

There are four ways Nox works without you starting it:

You set all of them up the same way: by saying what you want in plain words. Nox proposes it, you approve it, and it starts.

#How do routines work?

A routine is a standing job with a schedule. You might say:

Every weekday at 8, check my calendar and inbox and send me a short plan for the day.

Nox turns that into a routine with a schedule and an instruction, shows it to you, and starts once you approve. Each run is a full task, so a routine can do anything Nox can: browse, use your connected apps, write documents, make a voice memo or even record a short podcast episode of your morning news.

Two things keep routines from becoming noise:

• Nothing new, no ping. A run that finds nothing new since last time says so quietly instead of notifying you.
• Unread routines pause themselves. If a routine keeps reporting and you never open its results, it pauses and tells you, rather than spending money on reports nobody reads.

#How do watches work?

A watch is for the "tell me when" jobs. You give Nox a page, what to look at, a condition in your own words, and how often to check: anywhere from every half hour to once a week.

Tell me when these headphones are under £250 on this page.

The watch checks the page quietly in the background. It doesn't start a full task each time, so it costs very little. Unchanged pages aren't even judged again. It speaks up only when your condition becomes true, with one notice and a short thread you can reply to ("great, buy it" or "keep watching").

#How do triggers work?

A trigger starts a task when something happens somewhere else. The common ones:

• An email arrives in your inbox, or in your agent's own inbox, from a sender or about a subject you choose. Each agent can have its own email aliases too, so mail to "receipts" or "newsletters" can be handled differently.
• Something happens in your tools, like a new issue in GitHub or Linear, or an error in Sentry.
• A webhook fires from any app that can send one.

For example: "When an email with an invoice attached arrives, save the PDF to my invoices folder and add a row to my expenses sheet." The trigger runs the task each time. Anything that sends or pays still waits for you.

#What is the daily look?

Most assistants wait to be asked. Each morning, Nox can speak first. When you open nox.cool you see a short brief of your day, drawn from your calendar and inbox, and up to three ideas worth doing: a renewal coming up, a refund that's overdue, a reply you've been putting off. Each idea has a Do it button. If there's nothing worth your time, it says so and doesn't invent filler.

#How much does background work cost, and how do you limit it?

Background work costs money, like any AI work. A watch check is a fraction of a cent; a routine that browses ten sites costs more. To keep it predictable, nox.cool has one daily limit on all work nobody started: routines, triggers, watches, goals, projects and the daily look. It's five dollars by default.

Settings shows exactly where it went today under While you weren't asking, broken down by cause. If the limit is reached, background work waits until tomorrow and you're told once.

#Where do the notices go?

To the device you're actually using. If you're typing on your Mac, the notice shows there and your phone stays quiet. If you're away from your desk, it goes to your phone, or to Telegram or Slack if you've connected them.

#The short version

Routines run jobs on a schedule. Watches tell you when something changes. Triggers react to email and events. The daily look tells you what's worth doing. All of it stays quiet when there's nothing to say, asks before anything that matters, and runs inside a daily limit you control.

Nox is available today in nox.cool's early access, by invite. Read how Nox asks before it acts, or describe a routine on the home page to see how it would set it up.

#Questions and answers

How do I set up a routine?

Just say it in plain words, like "every Monday at 9, summarise last week's sales and send me the link". Nox proposes the routine with its schedule, and it starts once you approve it.

What's the difference between a routine and a watch?

A routine runs a task on a schedule. A watch checks one web page every so often and only tells you when a condition becomes true, like a price dropping or an item coming back in stock. Watches don't start a full task each time, so they cost very little.

Will Nox spam me with notifications?

No. A routine with nothing new says so quietly instead of pinging you, routines you stop reading pause themselves, and notices go only to the device you're using at the time.

How much does background work cost?

It depends on the job. A watch check costs a fraction of a cent; a routine that browses several sites costs more. There's a daily limit on all work nobody started, five dollars by default, and you can change it in Settings.

Can a routine do things that need my approval?

It can ask, but it won't act without you. If you're asleep, it waits, and approvals for background work expire after a while so nothing goes ahead unanswered.