Notifications

Your inbox tells you when something needs you: an issue assigned to you, a mention, a comment on something you watch, a due date coming up. Email is off until you turn it on, kind by kind. Everything here is also available to an AI agent through the MCP tools.

What you are told about

You watch an issue automatically when you create it, are assigned to it or comment on it, and you can watch any issue yourself. See Issues.

A few rules hold for every kind:

• Never about your own actions. Assigning yourself tells nobody. The same goes for what your git work sets off: merge a pull request and you are not told it was merged, nor that an automation then resolved the issue. Everyone else is.
• Only what you can open. You are never told about an issue in a project you are not in. If you leave a project, what you were told about it leaves your inbox too, and comes back if you rejoin. A deleted issue leaves with it, and returns if it is restored. An article taken back to draft stays in the inbox of the people who can read the draft: its author while they can still edit in the project, and the project’s admins. When something you watch is linked to an issue in a project you cannot open, the notification says an issue in another project instead of its key.
• Once per thing that happened. If you are mentioned in a comment on an issue you watch, you get one notification - the mention - not two.
• Due dates in your timezone. Due tomorrow and Overdue arrive once per issue, from 9am where you are, using the timezone in your profile.

Why notifications wait ten minutes

A change reaches you ten minutes after it was first made. People correct themselves: assigning an issue to the wrong person and fixing it a minute later sends one notification, to the right person. A change that is undone inside the window - a status set and set back - tells nobody at all, and a mention deleted before the ten minutes are up is never sent. Starting and finishing a sprint are the exception: they arrive straight away.

The inbox

The inbox is one list for every organisation you belong to, so a mention in ACME reaches you even while you are working in another organisation. Each entry shows which organisation it is from.

Open it from Inbox in the sidebar or the inbox icon at the top of every page.

• One entry per issue. Twelve changes to ACME-12 are one entry with twelve lines, newest first, not twelve rows. The arrow beside an entry opens its lines in place; Show all lists every one when there are more than ten. Articles are entries too, and a sprint starting or finishing is an entry of its own.
• Opening marks read. Click a line to go to what it is about and mark that notification read; click the entry’s title to open the issue or article and mark the whole entry read. An entry from another organisation switches you into that organisation first.
• Filter by kind (only mentions, say), by project, by organisation when you belong to more than one, or to what is unread. The address keeps your filters, so a bookmark reopens them.
• Mark read one notification or a whole entry with the tick that appears on hover, or everything at once with Mark all read. With a kind, project or organisation chosen it reads Mark all matching read and marks only what matches.
• The number in the header counts entries with anything unread. Your dashboard shows the newest five under Inbox.
• Due tomorrow and Overdue lines have no person beside them: nobody did anything, the date arrived. Someone who has since left the organisation keeps their name, marked Former member.

Nothing is ever deleted for you. Read notifications are cleared after 30 days, and unread ones after 90.

Email

Every email is off until you choose otherwise, in Settings → Notifications. For each kind you pick one of:

The kinds are grouped into Issues, Comments, Agile, Knowledge base and Development, and every change saves as you make it. Mentioned is marked most commonly enabled: it is the one most people turn on. Reactions are in-app only. Turn everything off at the top switches every email off in one go, and Undo in the message that follows puts your choices back. Your choices apply in every organisation you belong to. Digests use the time zone in your profile (Settings → Profile).

The digest

A digest comes from one organisation at a time - Your day in ACME · Nothing Left - and is grouped by project, then by kind. Issues assigned to you, mentions and due dates are listed one by one; comments, status changes and the rest on issues you watch are a single count with a link to your inbox. Anything you already read in the app is left out, and a digest with nothing in it is never sent.

Unsubscribing

Every activity email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and your email program’s own Unsubscribe button works too. It turns off only the kind of email you clicked it in - or, from a digest, that digest - and nothing else. The link opens a page that says what it will turn off and waits for you to press Turn these emails off, so a mail scanner that follows links never unsubscribes you; you do not need to be signed in. You can turn it back on in Settings → Notifications at any time.

Emails about your account - password resets, security alerts, invitations, storage warnings - are not notifications. They are always sent and have no unsubscribe link.

Asking an agent

“What’s waiting on me in ACME? Mark ACME-12 read, and email me mentions straight away but everything else once a day” is three tool calls: list_notifications, mark_notifications_read and set_notification_preferences. Reading your inbox never marks anything read. The agent’s token needs issues:read to read notifications and issues:write to mark them read or change your email choices. The standup-summary prompt also lists what is waiting on you.