Anthropic’s natural-language workflow primitive: a triggered job that runs a Claude prompt against connected tools (Gmail, Slack, CRMs) on a schedule, API call, or webhook — replacing visual no-code chains like n8n with a numbered SOP written in plain English.
What it is
A routine has four pieces: a trigger, a prompt describing what to do, a set of connectors to external tools, and an environment (model selection, secrets, defaults). Yann Dineau describes the core shift in framing: where n8n required wiring drag-and-drop nodes between an event source and an output, a routine fires the same event, has Claude read a natural-language SOP, and lands the result in the same destination — without the node chain.
There are three trigger types:
- Schedule — for fixed-cadence workflows like a 5:10am inbox draft
- API call — for passing structured payloads from another system, including Claude Code
- Webhook — for firing on external events, such as a Fireflies transcript completing or a prospect signing a proposal
Connectors (Gmail, Slack, CRM, calendar, etc.) are authorised once via OAuth and referenced by name in every subsequent routine prompt. The prompt itself is a numbered SOP with an explicit finish line — predictability comes from structure rather than from constraining the model. Routines can be set up end-to-end in under five minutes, and existing n8n workflows can be converted by pasting the workflow JSON into Claude Code and asking it to translate the node chain into a natural-language prompt.
Why it matters
Routines collapse a category of work — small operational automations — that previously required either custom code or a visual-builder tool. For knowledge workers and small teams, this is the same productivity shift that skills introduced inside Claude Code itself, applied to integrations across SaaS tools. The decision rule Dineau proposes is: build new routines for anything previously requiring an n8n node chain, convert existing chains where the prompt would be cleaner than the diagram, and leave high-frequency mechanical workflows alone in their existing system. The unit of automation is now a numbered SOP, not a node graph.