A routine is a specific, named job Ship runs on a schedule or trigger. "Daily security review" is a routine. "Daily digest" is a routine. "Clarify ambiguous acceptance criteria when a ticket sits in Review" is a routine. Each routine has a prompt template, a schedule (or trigger condition), and a target — like a Slack channel or your Inbox.
A specialist is the role a routine plays when it runs. The same agent (say, Claude) can take on the developer specialist for one routine and the technical architect specialist for another. Specialists are role definitions — they tell the agent what persona, context, and constraints apply. You might have a "security specialist" routine that reviews code and a "writer specialist" routine that drafts release notes, both running in the same workspace with the same agent.
In one sentence: routines run as specialists using agents.
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