Triggers

A trigger decides when an automation runs and what data the run starts with. There are two ways to set one up: the trigger node every new automation starts with, and the Triggers group of the node palette.

Standard trigger nodeCopy Anchor Link

A new automation opens with a trigger node already on the canvas. Open it and, on Trigger Settings, choose one or more trigger types. Each selected type gets its own section you can expand or collapse.

ScheduleCopy Anchor Link

Custom Cron opens a Custom Cron Builder with presets (for example Weekdays at 8 AM, Every 30 minutes, Weekday business hours) and a Raw Scheduler Expression field. The raw field accepts a five-field cron (0 8,20 * * *), the AWS form (cron(0 8 * * ? *)) or a rate (rate(1 hour)). A cron expression cannot restrict both day-of-month and day-of-week; use ? in one of them.

ExternalCopy Anchor Link

External Mode is either Manual or Webhook.

External calls use the Buni.ai public API and an API token. See Authentication and Async runs and callbacks.

FormCopy Anchor Link

The Form tile publishes a hosted web form; each submission starts a run. See Hosted forms.

Triggers groupCopy Anchor Link

Triggers from the palette are nodes you drag from its Triggers group. Each palette item is named after its trigger, for example Webhook Trigger or Stripe Trigger.

• A workflow can have several triggers. Each trigger node starts the workflow from its own output.
• Each trigger can be paused. Use the Enabled / Paused switch in the node's header. A paused trigger shows a Paused badge on the canvas and rejects deliveries.
• Recent deliveries lists the latest events the trigger received, newest first.
• Send test event runs the draft workflow with a sample payload. Test runs never touch the published version.

Core triggersCopy Anchor Link

Schedule settings are under Timetable: Frequency (Every hour, Every day, Every week, Every month, Custom cron), Time, Days of week, Day of month, Cron expression, Timezone, and optional Start date and End date. Next five runs previews the schedule. The cron field takes a standard five-field expression; the AWS six-field form with a year also works. Daylight-saving shifts are handled for you.

Webhook triggerCopy Anchor Link

The Endpoint section shows two URLs:

• Test runs the draft workflow immediately.
• Prod runs the published workflow. It answers 409 until you publish the project.

Under Request, Allowed methods limits which HTTP methods are accepted (others get 405), and Expected payload takes a JSON example of what callers send. Under Response, Mode is either Async (202), which acknowledges immediately, or Sync (wait for result), which waits for the run and returns its result. Custom status code overrides the default.

Signing requestsCopy Anchor Link

Until you add a secret the trigger shows Unverified and accepts any request to its URL. Select Generate signing secret and copy the secret; it is shown once. The trigger then shows Signed and rejects requests without a valid signature with 401.

Sign each request with HMAC-SHA256 over the raw request body and send it in the x-buni-signature header:

POST /api/hooks/t/<endpoint-token> HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
x-buni-signature: sha256=<hex HMAC-SHA256 of the raw body>

For replay protection, also send x-buni-timestamp with the current Unix time in seconds. The signature must then cover <timestamp>.<raw body>, and requests more than five minutes old are rejected.

import crypto from 'node:crypto';

const body = JSON.stringify({ orderId: 'ord_12345' });
const timestamp = Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000).toString();
const signature = crypto
  .createHmac('sha256', process.env.BUNI_TRIGGER_SECRET)
  .update(`${timestamp}.${body}`)
  .digest('hex');

await fetch(TRIGGER_URL, {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'x-buni-signature': `sha256=${signature}`,
    'x-buni-timestamp': timestamp,
  },
  body,
});

To stop a retried request from running the workflow twice, send an x-idempotency-key header. A repeat of a key the trigger has already accepted returns 200 with "deduplicated": true and does not start a run.

Webhook responsesCopy Anchor Link

App triggersCopy Anchor Link

App triggers start the workflow from an event in another product. Pick the trigger, choose a Connection, then pick the Events you care about. The Setup checklist in the node lists anything still missing.

Connections for Stripe, GitHub, Shopify, Telegram, Google Sheets, Airtable and HubSpot are added in the project's Integrations tab.

Webhook-based triggers receive events as they happen:

Trigger	Events	Setup
Stripe	Payments, checkouts, customers, subscriptions and invoices	A Stripe connection (secret key). Publishing registers the production webhook in Stripe for you.
GitHub	Push, pull requests, issues, issue comments, releases, workflow runs	A GitHub connection (token with repo admin) and a Repository (owner/name). The webhook is registered for you.
Shopify	Orders, customers and products	A Shopify connection (store domain and Admin API token). Shopify registers one webhook per selected event.
Telegram	Incoming messages, bot commands, button presses, edits and channel posts	A Telegram connection (bot token). A bot can feed only one trigger at a time.
Slack	Channel messages, bot mentions, reactions, channel created, member joined	Paste the trigger's URL into your Slack app's Event Subscriptions request URL, set the app's Signing Secret on the trigger, and subscribe the app to the same events.

Provider signatures are checked on every delivery (for example Stripe-Signature, X-Hub-Signature-256, X-Shopify-Hmac-Sha256, X-Slack-Signature), and repeated deliveries of the same provider event run only once.

Polling triggers check for changes on an interval. The first check records a baseline and does not fire, so existing records never start runs.

Trigger	Watches	Settings
Sessions	Sessions starting or ending in this project	Check every (minutes). Covers USSD sessions today. Abandoned sessions never fire Session ended.
Data Store	Records created, updated or deleted in one of your data stores	Data store, Poll every (minutes), Ignore workflow writes (on by default, so a workflow that writes to the store it watches does not loop).
Google Sheets	New or updated rows	A Google connection, Spreadsheet id, Range (default A1:Z1000, first row is headers), optional Watched columns, Poll every (minutes).
Airtable	New or updated records	An Airtable connection (personal access token), Base id, Table, optional View, Poll every (minutes).
HubSpot	Contacts, deals and tickets created or updated	A HubSpot connection, Poll every (minutes).

The minimum polling interval is 1 minute; the default is 5.

RelatedCopy Anchor Link