Automation Rules & Safeguards
How automation rules work, what stops one from discounting too much or too fast, and how to read the Safeguards page.
Show all sections (13)
- The three safeguards that always apply
- The anomaly auto-pause
- The first run of a new rule
- Escalation chains and the same actions
- FAQ
- Can a rule ever discount a product below my margin floor?
- What happens if a scheduled run would touch more products than my rule's max?
- Why does a rule I created on Growth show as view-only?
- Does the daily product cap reset per rule or per merchant?
- Related articles
Automation rules change prices, tags, and collections on your live store without you clicking anything, on a schedule or when new dead stock appears. That is powerful and it is also the single highest-risk surface in StockSweep — this article explains the safety limits before you turn one on, not after.
Estimated time: 5 minutes
What you'll accomplish
- Understand what a rule actually does when it runs (conditions → actions, on a schedule)
- Know the three system-wide safeguards that hold no matter what any individual rule allows
- Know what happens the first time a new rule runs, and why
- Read the Safeguards page (Automation → Safeguards) correctly
Requirements
- Plan: Automation rules require Pro or Enterprise. Free and Growth can view the Automation section but cannot create a rule (automation rules count is 0 on both).
- Escalation chains (a specific rule type — see Escalation Chains Explained) additionally require Pro or Enterprise; they are not available on Free or Growth even as an upgrade nudge.
How a rule is built
Every rule has four parts:
- Conditions — what a product must match (days without a sale, inventory value, vendor, season status, margin, market, and dozens more). Conditions can be grouped with AND/OR up to 3 levels deep.
- Actions — what happens to a matching product: apply a discount, remove a discount, apply cost-plus margin pricing, add/remove a tag, add/remove from a collection, send an alert, or a few other actions.
- A schedule — Manual only, Daily, Weekly, or "On new dead stock" (fires when detection flags a product, not on a fixed clock). Manual-only is the only schedule available on Growth; Daily/Weekly/event-triggered require Pro or Enterprise.
- A safety block — max products per run, a cooldown period, and a max discount percent. These are per-rule settings you choose when creating the rule, not global limits (see below for the difference).
The three safeguards that always apply
These are system-wide and identical for every rule on every merchant — no rule, however configured, can exceed them. They are published on Automation → Safeguards and read directly from the running engine, not hand-typed, so what you see there is what the engine actually enforces:
| Safeguard | What it means |
|---|---|
| Daily product cap (20,000 products/day) | The most products all of your rules together may change in one UTC day. Enforced as an atomic cross-rule reservation — two rules running at the same time cannot both spend the same budget. |
| Absolute discount ceiling (90%) | No automated discount can exceed this, whatever an individual rule's own max-discount setting allows. Guarantees an automated price can never reach zero. |
| Manual run confirmation (100 products) | A "Run now" you trigger by hand and that is estimated to touch more than this asks you to confirm first. Scheduled and event-triggered runs are covered by the daily cap and the anomaly auto-pause below instead — there is no one present to confirm those. |
A per-rule "max products per execution" setting (default 50, no upper bound) controls how much work happens per run, not per day — it is a form input, not a system safeguard. A rule can legitimately process hundreds of products across several runs while staying inside the daily cap above.
The anomaly auto-pause
Separately from the three safeguards above, every rule tracks its own average number of matched products over time. If a run suddenly matches far more products than that rule's history would predict, the rule pauses itself automatically rather than completing the run — this is the safety net for scheduled and event-triggered runs, which have no one present to confirm a "Run now." The sensitivity (how far above average counts as anomalous) is a per-rule setting, not a global number, because a rule watching a large, volatile catalog segment and a rule watching five SKUs need different thresholds.
The first run of a new rule
A brand-new rule doesn't run at full strength immediately. Its first execution completes, then pauses for your review before continuing — you see exactly what it changed on a small batch before it keeps going unattended. Resuming a rule you've reviewed is different from resuming a rule you paused for your own reasons; StockSweep tracks which one happened so a rule is never silently treated as "approved" just because someone clicked resume.
Escalation chains and the same actions
A rule type called Escalation Chain shares this page and this safety model but applies discounts in stages instead of once — see Escalation Chains Explained for how staging works and why it exists as a separate rule type rather than a setting on a standard rule.
FAQ
Can a rule ever discount a product below my margin floor?
No. Automated discounts go through the same margin-protection check as a manual discount you apply by hand — a rule cannot apply a discount its own safety cap allows if that discount would violate your configured margin floor. Margin floors are set under Settings → Margin Protection (a plan-gated Pro/Enterprise feature; not yet a dedicated Help Center article).
What happens if a scheduled run would touch more products than my rule's max?
Older runs used to stop at that limit and wait for the next scheduled tick — which, on a large catalog, could mean weeks before every product was reached. Runs now continue in batches until every matching product is processed in that same run, bounded only by the daily product cap above. Your rule's own "max products per execution" number describes batch sizing, not a ceiling on the run.
Why does a rule I created on Growth show as view-only?
Automation rule creation is Pro and Enterprise only. Growth can see the Automation section (so you know what upgrading unlocks) but the create action is gated by your plan's rule-count limit, which is 0 on Growth — see Plan Limits & Usage.
Does the daily product cap reset per rule or per merchant?
Per merchant, across every rule you run, once per UTC day. It exists specifically to stop rule fan-out (several rules each configured generously) from adding up to an unbounded daily spend against your store.
Related articles
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