Notes from the lab
Product updates, engineering write-ups and lessons from building Orbira.
Welcome to the Orbira Labs blog
What to expect here: product notes, engineering write-ups and lessons from building in the open.
Five weekly tasks every team should stop doing by hand
A short list of recurring chores that are ready for automation today.
How we think about permissions and trust
Automation is only useful if you trust it. Here is how we approach access, approvals and audit trails.
Why we are building an adaptive layer, not another app
The case for software that works across your tools instead of asking you to move into one more tab.
The busywork audit: a practical guide to finding what your team should automate
A step-by-step method for finding the recurring work that is worth automating, and the work that is not. Includes a scoring sheet you can copy.
How to describe a workflow so it works the first time
Six habits that turn a vague request into a workflow you can trust, with before and after examples.
Approval gates: when software should ask first
Why we built Orbira to ask before it acts, how we decide which steps need a yes, and how you can tune it.
Designing an assistant that explains itself
Notes on why every Orbira action carries its reasons, and what that changes about how we build the system.
What a good run log looks like
A run log is how you trust automation. Here is what we think belongs in one, and what does not.
Shared inbox triage, step by step
How to set up a workflow that labels and routes incoming mail, keeps replies under your control, and stays easy to audit.
A short checklist for connecting tools safely
Before you give any automation tool access to your accounts, run through these seven questions.