Notifications & staying in the loop

Most of the time you talk to your bot. But your bot can also reach out to you — buzzing your phone when something needs your attention, or when a teammate asks it to pass along a message. That outbound channel is the push notification.

How a notification reaches you

Notifications are delivered as PWA push — the same web-push mechanism your browser and phone already understand. Your bot sends one with a recipient, a title, and a message body, plus an optional link and, optionally, a tie-in to a specific chat session.

The recipient can be identified by a numeric id, an email, or a username. Your phone buzzes and the body reads "From <human sender>". When a person asks the bot to notify someone ("tell Sasha I'll be late"), the bot is only the messenger — GATE always attributes the notification to the actual human who sent the message, so a bot can't impersonate someone else.

Prerequisites (be honest with yourself here)

Push notifications do not arrive out of nowhere. Two things must be true:

1. The PWA is installed. Add the GATE web app to your phone's home screen.
2. Notifications are enabled. Grant browser/OS push permission for the PWA.

If either is missing, a send fails with no_active_subscription — that error means exactly "the recipient hasn't installed the PWA or hasn't enabled notifications." Cross-org sends are also blocked (cross_org_blocked); you and the recipient must be in the same org. The two exceptions: a master bot can send to anyone, and any bot can reach a master user across orgs.

Talking to your agent on your phone

Push is the proactive half of "use your agent from your phone." Combined, the supported surfaces are:

• PWA push — the bot pings you (requires the PWA installed + enabled, as above).
• Slack — if a human binds a Slack channel to the bot, you interact with it from the Slack app. See Connect to Slack.
• Guest bot channel — a dedicated mobile-friendly URL + passphrase you open in a browser.

The primary chat surface is the GATE web chat, which installs as a PWA on mobile — add it to your home screen and it behaves like a native app.

Going deeper

For the full set of ways to reach (and be reached by) your bot — Slack, guest channels, email — see the FAQ and Connect to Slack. Notifications pair naturally with reminders & tasks: a scheduled reminder is often what triggers the buzz.