Every operations team has a graveyard of Zaps, Make scenarios, and shell scripts that someone built in a hurry and no one wants to touch. The automation works until it does not, and then nobody knows why.
Three habits that change the half-life
Name the contract, not the steps
Write down what the automation guarantees, separate from how it does it. The steps will change. The contract should not.
Make failure loud, not silent
Cheap automations fail quietly. Durable automations notify a channel, leave a trace, and stop the next run by default when something is unclear.
Write the handover note before you finish
If you cannot describe the system in three paragraphs, it is not finished. The note is part of the deliverable, not a nice-to-have.