Sometimes you know exactly what you want IFTTT to do. You just want to say it, not click through to it. That's the fun part of typing your automation instead of building it piece by piece: describe it in a sentence, and it comes together right in front of you.
IFTTT (If This Then That) connects the apps, devices, and services you already use so they work together automatically. Social platforms, smart home gadgets, spreadsheets, email, you name it. Instead of moving information between them by hand, you set it up once and IFTTT handles the rest.
We ran this with thousands of people in beta before writing a word of this post, and a few patterns showed up fast. People want their posts moving between platforms without retyping them. They want their RSS feeds turned into something they'll actually read. They're asking AI to help write the caption, not just move the data. And a steady group is just trying to get their smart home to respond without a dozen taps.
So here are 10 prompts built around what came out of that beta, organized by the problem each one solves. Steal any of them word for word.
Join IFTTT today and try typing one in.
Post once, show up everywhere
If you post for a brand, a side project, or just yourself, you already know the tax that comes with being in more than one place at once. Write the post, then go post it again somewhere else, then again, hoping you didn't fat-finger the caption the second time around. It's not hard. It's just repetitive in a way that eats an afternoon in ten-minute increments.
1. Cross-post everywhere at once
"When I post a new photo on Instagram, share it to my Facebook Page, X, and Telegram channel too."
This was one of the most common builds in our beta, and it's easy to see why. One photo, three destinations, all in one go. Whatever you post once on Instagram shows up everywhere your audience actually is, in the format each platform expects.
2. Announce your stream and keep a record of it
"Every time I go live on Twitch, can you tweet about it and log the stream in a Google Sheet?”
This one's for anyone building an audience around live content. The moment you go live, your followers on X find out immediately, and a running log builds itself on its own, so you've always got a record of when you streamed and for how long, without having to note it down yourself.
Let AI handle the writing part
This is the part that genuinely surprised us. A cluster of power users weren't just asking IFTTT to move information around, they were asking it to write something first. A summary, a caption, a recap, and then post it. That's a different kind of automation than we're used to talking about, and it might be the biggest shift in this whole launch.
3. An AI summary of every new RSS item, delivered straight to your inbox
"I want a quick summary of every new item in my RSS feed, emailed to me by Claude."
Instead of opening the full article every time your feed updates, you get the gist first: a short, readable summary waiting in your inbox the moment something new comes in. Skim it, decide if it's worth the full read, and move on.
4. Draft it with AI, but keep the final say
"Can you draft a tweet with AI every time I add a row to my Google Sheet, using best Twitter practices, and add it to Buffer so I can review it before it goes out?"
Not everyone wants full autonomy on what goes out under their name, and that's a completely reasonable line to draw. This version gets you an AI-written first draft, built around the topic you give it and shaped with Twitter's own best practices in mind, sitting in your Buffer queue, ready to review, tweak, or approve on your own schedule instead of posting the second it's written.
Feed reading, actually solved
RSS was the single most common thread in our beta data, and it makes sense. It's the format that rewards a little structure more than almost anything else. Left alone, it's a firehose. Organized even slightly, it's the easiest way to keep up with exactly what you care about and nothing else.
5. One email, your favorite feed, once a week
"Send me a weekly email digest of new posts from the Universe Today RSS feed."
Not every feed needs a daily check-in. For the ones you follow out of genuine interest rather than urgency, like space news, a weekly roundup hits the right pace: enough to stay caught up, not so much that it turns into another thing demanding your attention every morning.
6. Get pinged the moment something new shows up
"I want to know the moment a new item shows up in my RSS feed. Can you message me on Telegram when it does?"
No digest, no waiting for a set time of day, just an instant ping the second something new lands in the feed. For a feed you check constantly anyway, this just moves the checking part off your plate entirely.
7. Turn a group chat keyword into an email you won't miss
"When someone sends a message with a specific key phrase in my Telegram group, can you email me on Gmail?"
Group chats move fast, and the one message that actually needs your attention can scroll past in seconds. This catches it the moment the key phrase shows up and puts it somewhere with a little more permanence: your inbox, where it'll wait for you instead of disappearing into the scroll.
8. Know the second someone's talking about you, right where your team already is
"When I'm mentioned on X, post it to my Slack channel."
If you're managing a brand or product presence as a team, a personal notification only gets one person the news. Posting mentions straight into Slack means whoever's on point for social can jump on it immediately, without someone having to relay it manually first.
For the builders: webhooks, wired your way
If you're the kind of person who already has a system, a script, or a piece of hardware quietly sending data somewhere, webhooks are how you plug that into everything else without writing a full integration yourself. This group of prompts came almost entirely from people who wanted their existing setup to talk to IFTTT, not the other way around.
9. Route any webhook event to Telegram, formatted your way
"When a new video matching my YouTube search shows up, can you send a web request to my endpoint?"
For anyone tracking a topic, competitor, or keyword on YouTube, this skips the manual searching entirely. The moment a new matching video appears, it fires straight to your own endpoint, ready to feed into whatever script, dashboard, or app you've built to do something with it.
10. Keep a running log of everything that comes through
"Log every webhook event to a Google Sheet so I have a record of all of them."
Notifications are great in the moment, but a searchable history is a different kind of useful. Every event lands as a new row, timestamped and organized, so three months from now you can actually answer "when did this start happening?" instead of guessing.
And a home run for smart homes
Alongside all of this, a steady stream of people were just typing plain-English requests at their homes: lights, doorbells, locks, thermostats. If your setup includes Nest, Govee, Kasa, SmartThings, Ring, or MyQ, this one's for you.
Bonus: let your doorbell handle the lights
"When my Ring doorbell is pressed, turn on my Philips Hue lights."
One press, and your porch or entryway lights up automatically, no fumbling for a switch while your hands are full, no separate step to remember. Whoever's at the door gets a well-lit welcome without you doing a thing.
Try one, see what happens
Ten prompts is a lot to take in at once, and you don't need to set up all of them today. Pick whichever one solves something you're already dealing with, whether that's posting the same thing twice, a doorbell that never quite gets around to turning on the lights, or a feed you haven't actually opened all week.
Type it in your own words, and watch it come together. Every one of these is a real automation, ready to go.
Join IFTTT today and describe your first automation.