Notifications and messages

DevSpec tells you about things that need you, like a mention, an assignment or a failed deploy, in the notification bell and on the Notifications page, and by email for the kinds you choose. Messages are private one-to-one conversations with the people you work with, for when you want to talk without opening a session.

Notifications arrive in the app and by email only. There are no push notifications and no Slack messages; on a phone, DevSpec runs in your browser and shows the same bell.

The notification bell

The bell sits in the header at the top right of every page. Its badge counts your unread notifications that need action, such as mentions, replies, assignments and failures. Progress and FYI notifications never add to the badge, so a number on the bell always means something is waiting on you.

Open the bell to see your latest notifications in three tabs:

• Needs action (the default): things waiting on you.
• Activity: progress and FYI, such as successful deploys, verified items and comments.
• All: both together.

Select a notification to open the session, task or page it's about; opening it marks it read. Mark all read clears everything at once. The gear opens your notification settings, and View all notifications opens the full Notifications page.

When someone adds you to a project, the bell tells you and links straight to it. You don't need to accept anything: you're on the project with the role they chose. See Organizations, members and roles.

The Notifications page

Open Notifications from the bottom of the project sidebar, or View all notifications in the bell. It holds every notification you've received, across all your projects.

• Needs action, Activity and All switch between what's waiting on you, what's FYI, and everything.
• All and Unread choose whether to show notifications you've already read.
• The type filters narrow the list to one category, such as Deployments, Billing or Tasks.

To see your mentions, pick the Mentions & replies filter. It shows every time someone @mentioned you in a session or in a task's comments, and every reply to one of your messages. (If you're looking for a separate Mentions page, this filter is where mentions live.)

Waiting on you

At the top of the page, Waiting on you groups the mentions and replies you haven't dealt with by the person who sent them, so you can see at a glance who is waiting for an answer. Select a person's card to open their latest mention, or dismiss the card to mark those mentions read. Waiting on you appears on the unfiltered view and under Mentions & replies, never under Activity.

What you're notified about

Each notification belongs to a category. These are the categories on Settings → Notifications, what each covers, and where it goes until you change it:

An agent finishing an item, failing on it or giving up isn't sent as a notification. Follow that in the session the agent is working in, or on the item itself.

Being added to a project is only ever shown in the bell. Billing notifications reach only the organization's Owners and Admins, in the bell and by email; the billing contact address gets the emails too. See Billing, usage and limits.

Confirm an answer that needs to come from you

Waiting on you to confirm means Dev or an agent has proposed an answer for you to confirm yourself. Open the request to read the exact answer, then confirm or decline it. You can do this even when the proposing agent is offline.

Sending the request changes nothing about the decision. Confirming applies your answer; declining asks you for a reason. These requests also appear under Waiting on you on the Review page. See Review.

Choose what reaches your email

Open Settings → Notifications (or the gear on the bell or the Notifications page) to choose how each kind of notification reaches you.

Product updates at the top of the page controls occasional emails from the DevSpec team when major features or improvements ship. Turn it on or off independently of your project and workspace notifications.

Activity updates is one switch for all progress and FYI notifications: successful deploys, passing tests, verified items and comments. Turn its In-app or Email switch off to quiet them everywhere at once. Things that need you (mentions, replies, assignments, reviews and failures) are never affected by it.

Under Categories, each category has an In-app and an Email switch. Three categories mix things that need you with things that don't, so Show details opens finer rows inside them:

• Tasks: Assignments & due dates, Needs attention & review, and Discussion & progress.
• Agents: Needs you (an agent waiting for you in its terminal, and failed automation runs) and Agent sharing.
• Deployments: Failures and Successes.

Show details also lists exactly what you will be notified about in each category, marked Needs action or Activity. The most specific choice you make wins: a finer row beats its category, and a category beats Activity updates.

What you can't switch off

• A failed payment always reaches the bell of the organization's Owners and Admins, even with Billing in-app turned off.
• Two emails protect your account and can't be switched off: Account closure warnings, sent 30, 7 and 1 day before an account unused for two years is closed, and the Inactivity notice, sent once if your organization has money in its balance but you haven't been active for a year. See Your settings.

Reminders and daily notices

Two notifications arrive on a schedule rather than when something happens.

Due-date reminders. On the day an open task is due, DevSpec reminds the people assigned to it, or the item's owner if nobody is assigned, with a "Due today" notification that opens the item. It belongs to Tasks → Assignments & due dates, so it arrives in-app by default and by email if you turn that on.

New questions in Review. At most once a day, DevSpec tells you about new decisions and changes that concern you, with a link to Open Review. Descriptive records that are merely possibly outdated stay on Review's Possibly outdated tab and are not included in this notice. It belongs to Knowledge & artifacts: in-app by default, and by email if you turn email on for that category. See Review.

DevSpec doesn't send a daily or weekly summary email of your activity. To catch up on a project, open its Overview; to catch up on a session, type /catchup in it. See Project Overview and Sessions.

Send a private message

Messages is for private one-to-one conversations with the people you work with, outside any project. Open it from the project sidebar, near the bottom.

Start a conversation with New message and choose someone you work with, or hover over a person's name in a session and choose Message to open a conversation beside the session.

Who you can message depends on your organization role:

• Owners, Admins and Members of an organization can message each other.
• A Guest can message only people they share a project with, and people can message a Guest only when they share a project.

Messages belong to the organization you're working in, so switch organization to see the conversations in another. Every conversation is between exactly two people; there are no group threads. If one of you leaves the organization, or a Guest stops sharing a project with the other person, the conversation is archived.

Inside a message thread

A message thread works like a small, private session between two people. Write in the message box at the bottom and send.

• Attachments and voice notes. Attach files, or speak a voice note. Voice notes in Messages always include your voice so the other person can play it back, whatever your Save my voice in messages setting says for sessions. Voice recordings are kept for 48 hours and then automatically deleted, while the written words stay.
• Reply, react and delete. Reply to a specific message, add an emoji reaction, or delete one of your own messages. If a message fails to send, you can retry or delete it.
• Read status and session links. You see when the other person has read your latest message (Read), and messages that were copied or moved into a project session link straight to that session.
• Still to discuss. When the two of you leave something unsettled, it appears in a Still to discuss strip above the message box. Mark a point discussed, reopen it, or start a session from it.
• Typing. You see when the other person is typing or recording.

Dev doesn't take part in Messages. There's no Send to picker, and Dev never reads or replies to a thread. When you want Dev or an agent involved, move the discussion into a session.

Turn messages into a session

When a private conversation turns into real work, take it to a project session. In the thread, choose Select, pick the messages you want, then Start a session.

The dialog is titled Start a session with N messages (or "this message"). Pick a project, then either start A new session or add the messages to Sessions that already exist in that project. The messages are copied: they stay in your conversation, and the session gets copies, where Dev, your agents and the rest of the project team can pick up from them.

You can also start a session from a single point in the thread's Still to discuss strip.

How you know you have a new message

Unread messages show in two places:

• a count on Messages in the project sidebar
• a messages icon in the header, beside the notification bell, which appears only when something is unread

Select the header icon to see who has written to you and open the conversation. The Messages page lists your conversations with the most recently active at the top, each with a preview of its latest message, so the count and the header icon are the quickest way to see whether someone is waiting for a reply.