monday.com App · v1.0.0 · Coming soon
Automation Guard
Stop monday automations firing twice for the same event.
- Idempotency
- Duplicate prevention
- Fails open
- Per-item or per-value
The gap it closes
monday automations are stateless. They fire every time the trigger condition is met — so a status going Done → Working → Done sends the “it’s done” action twice, and a webhook retry sends it a third time.
The result is duplicate emails, duplicate invoices, duplicate items. There is no native way to say “only once”.
Automation Guard is a gate you put at the front of the chain.
How it works
Three steps, then it runs itself.
- 01
Put the guard first in your automation
It runs before the actions you want protected.
- 02
Choose what “the same event” means
Per item, per item + value, per board + value, or once per item per day — whichever matches the duplicate you are actually seeing.
- 03
Set how long the memory lasts
Seconds, minutes, hours or days — or forever, if the action should only ever happen once.
How it behaves
The decisions that matter.
-
It fails open, never closed
If the guard cannot read its own history, it lets the event through. Blocking a real event is worse than allowing a rare duplicate — so the failure mode is deliberately the safe one.
-
Values are compared sensibly
Case and surrounding whitespace are ignored, so “Done” and “ done ” are correctly recognised as the same event.
-
A clock problem cannot wedge your automation
A stored timestamp in the future is treated as “let it through” rather than permanently locking the gate.
-
Going over your plan does not block real work
If the account exceeds its plan, the guard passes events through rather than stopping them. A billing state must never silently halt your operations.
Pricing
Free tier that actually works.
Billed per account through monday.com's built-in monetization — not per seat. The free tier is deliberately functional so the app can prove itself on a real board before you pay for it. Trials get full Pro.
Free
$0
Basic
$12/mo
Standard
$28/mo
Pro
$55/mo
Documentation & data handling
Everything it touches, stated plainly.
Installing & getting started
- Install Automation Guard into your monday.com account and approve the permissions listed below.
- Open the board you want it on and add the app’s Automation block.
- Follow the three steps above. The free tier covers 1 guard — fully functional, on one automation, so you can prove it works before paying.
- Stuck? Email support@buildsbyluke.com — two business days response.
Permissions, and why each one
me:read- Identify the installing account so the deduplication memory is scoped to it.
boards:read- Read the triggering item and value in order to fingerprint the event.
What is stored, and where
- The app stores a one-way fingerprint of each event it has seen, plus a timestamp — never the item content itself.
- Fingerprints live in monday’s own app storage inside your account and expire with the window you set.
- The app runs entirely on monday code — monday.com’s own infrastructure. There is no external database.
Technical detail
- Version
- 1.0.0
- Hosting
- monday code (hosted on monday.com infrastructure)
- Runtime
- Node.js 18
- Authentication
- OAuth 2.0 + per-request JWT verification
- monday surfaces
- Automation block
- App ID
11809981- Support
- support@buildsbyluke.com
- Support SLA
- Two business days
- Publisher
- Builds By Luke, Canada
Questions people ask.
Does it store my board data?
No. It stores a one-way fingerprint of the event and a timestamp. The content itself is never retained.
What if the guard itself breaks?
Your events go through. It is built to fail open, because silently swallowing real work is the worse outcome.
Automation Guard is on its way.
It is built and running — currently going through monday.com’s marketplace review. Want a look before it lands?