Automator - dynamic folder creation and traverse

Don't overlook the macOS screencapture utility that you can apply in your Run Shell Script action, instead of the Automator Take Screenshot action.

man screencapture

The screencapture utility cannot take three concurrent screen snaps, but it can simultaneously capture each screen in a for-loop with the screencapture -D switch:

SCREENS=3
for s in {1..$SCREENS};
do
   /usr/sbin/screencapture -D $s -x -r /path/to/folder
done



Automator is great at linear tasks. If fails miserably when there is any kind of logic (e.g. "does the folder already exist?"), error handling, and looping.

Since your workflow has multiple variables and checks, I'd suggest moving up the stack and using something more flexible such as AppleScript (which can be invoked via a Run AppleScript action) or a shell script.

Another twist is that some of the built-in shell commands can already take care of some of the idiosyncrasies for you - for example, this shell command will create a directory tree on your desktop, creating directory levels as needed, and not erroring if the directory already exists:

mkdir -p ~/Desktop/2022/06/21

This one line takes care of your steps 1, 2, and 3

This AppleScript (which you can incorporate into your Workflow) should meet your basic req - creating the directories and saving the screenshot

use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions

-- get the current date
set cur_date to (get current date)
-- extract the date components
tell cur_date
	set y to year as text
	set m to my trim(its month as number)
	set d to day as text
	-- initially, the time is represented as a count of seconds since midnight
	-- this calls a handler to format it in a human-readable manner
	set t to my formatTime(time)
end tell

set the_path to "~/Desktop/" & y & "/" & m & "/" & d
do shell script "mkdir -p " & the_path

do shell script "cd " & the_path & "; screencapture " & t & ".png"

on formatTime(t)
	-- take the number of seconds and break out hours, mins secs
	set the_hours to my trim(t div 60 div 60)
	set the_mins to my trim(t div 60 mod 60)
	set the_secs to my trim(t mod 60)
	-- format it into a human readable form
	return the_hours & "_" & the_mins & "_" & the_secs as text
end formatTime

on trim(num)
	-- quick method to prepend 0 to single-digit numbers
	-- this turns "6" into "06"
	return characters -2 through -1 of ("0" & num) as text
end trim

There's a little more work to do - specifically how to handle multiple screens (appending arguments to the screencapture command), and the cleanup (which is pretty easy, just have to work out the scheduling)

Since Automator is water over a waterfall of data between subsequent actions, it has no logic or control blocks unless you create them in a Run AppleScript or Run Shell Script action. For instance, let's say you want to create a year, month and day folder hierarchy based on the current date and you are using the Zsh shell:

mkdir -p "${(j:/:)${(s:-:)$(date +%F)}}"

would create the following folder hierarchy in the current folder:

The (s:-:) splits the 2022-06-21 date/time format (%F) into an array of three elements, and then (j:/:) joins those array elements into a new string that is interpreted by mkdir as:

mkdir -p 2022/06/21

which then creates the outer 2022 directory, a 06 month sub-folder, and then the 21 sub-folder within the month. If these already exists, then mkdir -p quietly does nothing.