Your First Playbook

In this tutorial you will build a simple playbook that takes a topic as input, asks an AI to write a one-paragraph summary, and returns the result. No external services, no credentials.

Time: ~10 minutes
What you'll use: Studio UI, ai_prompt step

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Step 1: Create the playbook

1. In Studio, go to Playbooks in the left sidebar
2. Click New Playbook
3. Set the name: My First Playbook
4. Set Trigger type to manual
5. Set Output key to summary
6. Click Save

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Step 2: Add an input

Inputs are values you supply when you trigger the playbook. You define them by using them in a step — there's nothing to configure upfront.

Your playbook will accept a topic input. You'll reference it in the next step as {{.inputs.topic}}.

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Step 3: Add an ai_prompt step

1. Click Add step
2. Choose step type: ai_prompt
3. Set Output key: summary
4. In the Prompt field, enter:

Write a single paragraph (3-5 sentences) summarising the following topic for a general audience.

Topic: {{.inputs.topic}}

5. Leave the model as the default
6. Click Save step

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Step 4: Run the playbook

1. Click Run (or Trigger manually)
2. In the inputs panel, add:
   • Key: topic
   • Value: The history of the bicycle
3. Click Run

The run appears in Run History. Click on it to see:

• Status: success or failed
• Step outputs: expand each step to see what it returned
• Final output: the value of the step whose output_key matches the playbook's output_key (summary)

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Step 5: Inspect the output

Open the run and expand the ai_prompt step. You'll see:

• Input: the rendered prompt with {{.inputs.topic}} replaced
• Output: the paragraph the AI wrote
• Tokens used and cost

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What's next?

• Add a second step — try chaining an export_output step after ai_prompt to format the result as HTML
• Version-control it — see Provision & CLI to save this as a YAML file
• Write a test — see Testing to add an assertion that the output is never empty
• Explore step types — see Step Types for what else you can do