posthog/creating-ai-subscription

Creating a prompt subscription

When to use this

A subscription delivers a PostHog report to email or Slack on a recurring schedule. There are three kinds, distinguished by which field you set — the kind is derived and returned as the read-only resource_type:

• insight — periodic snapshots of one existing insight (resource_type: "insight")
• dashboard — periodic snapshots of a dashboard's tiles (resource_type: "dashboard")
• prompt — a recurring AI-generated report from a free-text prompt: an LLM plans and runs HogQL over the project's data and synthesizes a fresh markdown report each tick (resource_type: "ai_prompt")

Use this skill for the prompt kind — i.e. when the user wants a recurring AI summary of X (on any cadence — daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) rather than a recurring snapshot of one existing insight/dashboard, or a single one-off report. Pick a prompt subscription when the value is the analysis itself (the LLM deciding what to query and writing it up), not a fixed chart they already built. For an insight/dashboard subscription, set insight/dashboard instead of prompt and the AI gates below don't apply.

This skill covers creating the subscription. Once it exists you manage its lifecycle with the same subscriptions-* tools (see below): list it, edit/disable/ re-enable it, send a test delivery, or delete it.

Tools

| Tool | Purpose | | -------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | | posthog:subscriptions-create | Create the recurring prompt subscription | | posthog:subscriptions-list | Confirm it landed; inspect existing subscriptions | | posthog:subscriptions-partial-update | Edit, disable (enabled: false), or re-enable it | | posthog:subscriptions-test-delivery-create | Send an immediate test delivery to its target(s) | | posthog:subscriptions-delete | Soft-delete it (stops all future deliveries) | | posthog:integrations-list | Find a Slack integration_id (filter kind=slack) | | posthog:integrations-channels-retrieve | List a Slack integration's channels (id + name) |

What you need before calling

The endpoint enforces three create-time gates and will return 400 if any fails:

1. PostHog Cloud, or DEBUG=true — self-hosted production deployments are not eligible (the LLM call routes through a PostHog-managed key).
2. Org-level "AI data processing approved" — must be toggled on in Org settings → Data → AI data processing. The user must opt in to AI features for the organization first.
3. Prompt subscriptions enabled for the organization — a PostHog-managed rollout flag. If it's off, the org has not been granted access yet; tell the user to reach out to PostHog to enable it (there is no self-serve toggle).

If any of the three is missing, stop and tell the user which one to fix — re-calling the tool will not help.

Your access token also needs the query:read scope in addition to subscription:write: a prompt subscription runs LLM-generated HogQL over the project's data, so the backend requires query access to create, edit/re-enable, test-deliver, or delete one. A subscription:write-only token is rejected with a 403.

Required arguments

prompt: "..."                         # ≤4000 chars; setting this (with no insight/dashboard) makes it a prompt sub → resource_type "ai_prompt"
target_type: "email" | "slack"        # webhook is rejected for prompt subs
target_value: "..."                   # comma-separated emails, or "<channel_id>|<channel_name>"
frequency: "daily" | "weekly" | "monthly" | "yearly"
interval: 1                            # 1 = every tick; 2 = every other tick; etc.
start_date: "2026-09-15T09:00:00Z"   # anchors the recurrence + time-of-day; need not be in the future — the scheduler delivers the next occurrence
title: "..."                          # display name in the subscriptions list

There is no resource_type argument to send — the kind is derived from which field you set (prompt ⇒ AI report) and returned as the read-only resource_type.

Optional arguments

byweekday: ['monday', 'wednesday'] # weekly only — days the rrule fires
bysetpos: 1 # most useful with monthly; requires byweekday — e.g. byweekday:['monday']+bysetpos:-1 = last Monday
count: 10 # cap total deliveries
until_date: '2026-12-31T00:00:00Z' # stop on/before this date
integration_id: 42 # Slack only — required; from integrations-list (see "Slack target")

Slack target

target_value must be <channel_id>|<channel_name> (the format the integration returns). Build it in three steps:

1. posthog:integrations-list filtered by kind=slack → pick the Slack integration's id.
2. posthog:integrations-channels-retrieve with that id → pick a channel; it returns each channel's id and name, which you assemble into target_value as <id>|<name>.
3. Pass that integration's id as integration_id — the subscription is pinned to one specific Slack integration so reconnections elsewhere don't accidentally re-route deliveries.

Examples

Weekly Monday-morning AI summary by email

prompt: 'Top events week over week, with the biggest drops and any new failure modes called out.'
target_type: email
target_value: [email protected]
frequency: weekly
interval: 1
byweekday: ['monday']
start_date: '2026-09-14T08:00:00Z'
title: 'Weekly product pulse'

Daily Slack report at 9am

prompt: "Yesterday's sign-ups, where they came from, and any errors they hit during onboarding."
target_type: slack
target_value: 'C0123456789|growth-updates' # <channel_id>|<channel_name>; only the channel id is used, the name is cosmetic
integration_id: 42
frequency: daily
interval: 1
start_date: '2026-09-15T09:00:00Z'
title: 'Daily onboarding watch'

Pitfalls

• The kind is immutable. It's derived from which relation is set, so you can't flip an insight or dashboard sub into a prompt sub after the fact (or vice versa) — a PATCH that adds a prompt to an insight sub is rejected. Pick the right kind at create time.
• Re-enabling a previously auto-disabled prompt sub has two preconditions, both enforced on the PATCH: (1) a valid prompt — already persisted on the row, or a new one in the PATCH body (so bare {"enabled": true} works when the stored prompt is still valid, but is rejected when the disable cause was an invalid prompt until you supply a good one); and (2) the original creator is still an active user — if that account was deactivated the sub cannot be re-enabled at all (no prompt will help; re-create it instead).
• next_delivery_date is server-computed from the rrule. Don't try to set it manually — it's read-only. The first delivery fires at the first start_date occurrence that is at least a short buffer (currently ~15 minutes) in the future, so a start_date only seconds ahead rolls to the next occurrence.
• Transient send failures retry; only permanent failures auto-disable. A transient failure (Slack rate limit, SMTP blip, network) fails that delivery and is retried by Temporal within the run, then re-fires on the next scheduled tick — it does not auto-disable the subscription, so a persistently-failing channel will keep retrying every tick until you fix it. Only permanent/structural causes auto-disable: a disconnected Slack integration, a revoked channel permission, an invalid prompt, or revoked AI data-processing consent. (For multi-recipient email, a delivery only fails when every recipient fails; partial successes still send.) Within a single delivery run the rendered markdown is cached, so Temporal retries of that run don't re-run the LLM pipeline — but each new scheduled tick generates a fresh report.

After it lands

subscriptions-list will return the new row. Confirm resource_type: "ai_prompt", enabled: true, next_delivery_date is in the future, and prompt matches what you sent. The first scheduled tick will run the planner → HogQL → synthesis pipeline and email/Slack the rendered markdown.