I automate extensively, but I don't use many modern/specialised tools
just for automation. I tend to rely on general purpose scripting tools, templates, and programming with relevant APIs instead.
For example, I write many simple programs, often just shell scripts, and I have a go-to set of popular libraries and system tools for most integration purposes. I use many types of triggers to start those activities, including scheduled jobs, hooks from local programs like Git, webhooks from online services, and various other things.
I also customise software UIs extensively. My text editor, graphics and other creative programs, browsers, and other software that I use regularly are all full of macros, templates, presets and the like, and often have reconfigured keyboard shortcuts, menus/toolbars, or event triggers set up to access them quickly or perform tasks automatically at appropriate times.
As for why I don’t use a lot of the modern, dedicated automation tools, it’s not that I have anything in particular against them, but after building software for the first few decades, I find it is almost always faster and more reliable for me personally to do things the “old-fashioned” way. These modern, pretty tools are all communicating with the services they automate using APIs behind the scenes anyway, and accessing those is usually straightforward from just about any decent shell or programming language if you need to.
