Create Hyperlink Text Variable

If it's fully automated, phone numbers and websites are easy enough to find and replace with a grep statement, but what I'm assuming may happen in your document is text like "call us" or "visit our website".

I did find that the hyperlinks function will accept a selection, but I could not figure out how to select a variable instance directly based on object model.  That said, I was able to loop through text variables via GREP, select the variable and assign a hyperlink that way. The next steps would be to create/assign a character style and edit/remove an existing hyperlink:

//Set findChangeGrepOptions before this
aD = app.activeDocument;
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = "~v";
haystack = app.activeDocument.findGrep();
//Create Destination outside of the loop so that anything created is associated with eachother in the hyperlinks panel
var dest = aD.hyperlinkURLDestinations.add("tel:999.999.9999", { name: "Phone Number" });
for (i = 0; i < haystack.length; i++) {
    needle = haystack[i];
    app.select(needle);
    if (needle.textVariableInstances[0].resultText == "POTATOHEAD") {
        var source = aD.hyperlinkTextSources.add(aD.selection[0]);
        //Create a name for the Hyperlink, it must be unique so it's incremented below
        var needleName = needle.textVariableInstances[0].resultText + " " + i;
        aD.hyperlinks.add(source, dest, { name: needleName });
    }
}

I tested a bit with hyperlinks and text variables, and it looks like hyperlinks are only compatible with text in scripting.

It will not accept the below:

app.activeDocument.textVariables.item('VAR_NAME').associatedInstances[0].resultText

Something like this will work with modification:

aD = app.activeDocument;
var source = aD.hyperlinkTextSources.add(aD.selection[0].words[0]);
var dest = aD.hyperlinkURLDestinations.add("www.adobe.com");
aD.hyperlinks.add(source,dest);

I don't think text variables are a good option primarily because the text always stays the same. If that's the case you could just use parent pages but then you're locked into layout.

This may be obvious, but when you set a hyperlink it actually creates a character style and color. So instead you could indicate links by styles and use a script to update them, or perhaps tags.

Or... What about just using the hyperlinks panel? Once the links are in there you can batch edit, and it gives you visibility to things not matching.