A new, event-driven trigger in GitLab Duo Agent Platform lets flows fire the moment a work item is created, turning triage and assignment from a manual, all-day chore into automation that runs in seconds. This comprehensive guide shows you how to use the "Work item created" trigger and follow along with this video demonstration:See the flow fire, route, and assign in real time — and imagine what continuous, hands-off automation could do for your own projects.The problem: Assignment doesn't scale by handAssigning work manually across projects is harder than it looks. It's not just a single decision; it’s dozens of them, every single day. For every new issue that pops up, someone has to pause, check team capacity, balance current workloads against incoming tasks, and then decide where that item should go. Factor in meetings, breaks, or PTO, and the whole process can lengthen even more. While this works at a small scale, it quickly falls apart as volume grows, leading to delayed triage, uneven work distribution, and team leads burning their time on routing tasks rather than tackling higher-value work.Until recently, that friction was baked into how flows worked. Every GitLab Duo Flow required a human action in the UI (e.g. a mention, an assignment, or an assign-reviewer event) to get started. Driving flows programmatically or firing them the instant something happened wasn't possible without someone manually pulling the trigger. So even a well-built assignment flow still waited on a person to kick it off.How the "Work item created" trigger helpsThe "Work item created" trigger closes that gap. It fires automatically the moment a new work item is created in a project, with no manual handoff required. Instead of a person noticing the issue, evaluating the team’s workload, and assigning it, a flow springs into action on its own and does the routing for you. With triggers, flows run when the conditions your organization defines are met — continuously, in the background — while your developers stay focused on the work that actually requires judgment.Value and benefitsThe "Work item created" trigger is beneficial in the following ways:Instant, hands-off triage