The Inbox
The Inbox is everything waiting for you in one list: agents’ questions and permission requests, work to accept, stuck steps, and news. When agents and workflows run on their own, it’s the one place to check.
Open Inbox in the rail (or Ctrl+] then i). The number on its icon is how many things wait on you.
Needs you and Updates
- Needs you: things waiting for your answer. Nothing moves on until you deal with them.
- Updates: news, newest first, unread in bold (an agent finished its turn, CI failed, a pull request merged, a workflow failed). Mark all read, Clear all, or Clear one.
Each row shows the kind’s icon, the item’s title, its ticket and who asks, and how long it has waited. Pick one to see it beside the list, laid out the same for every kind:
- at the top, the kind, the ticket, who asks and when, the title, and links to the Ticket, the agent’s session, its Changes (with lines added and removed: the Changes view), its pull request or CI log, and Run…, each opened in the ticket’s workspace;
- one line on why it waits on you, then what it’s about: the agent’s questions, a command, a step’s passes, a notice;
- at the bottom, a note box where the item takes one, then the main action, the other choices, and Dismiss, Stop or Won’t do on the right.
Keys: j / k down and up, Enter the main action, o open its ticket, e dismiss, 1–9 pick a question’s choice, y / n allow or deny an approval.
What lands in Needs you
Items are listed in five sections, most urgent first.
Questions
An agent asked you something. The title is the question in one line; what the agent found and why it asks shows under it as the agent’s message. Each question is a card: each choice has its label and what it means, with its pros and cons. The choice the agent recommends is marked Recommended, says why, and is already picked: nothing is sent until you press Send answers. Pick another choice (or press its number), or pick Something else… and write your own. Send answers says how many you’ve answered. A request for a secret (a token, a password) has a masked field, and the value goes straight to PDT’s secret store, never the agent (see Secrets).
Approvals
An agent wants to run a command or edit a file, shown as it would run: Allow once, Always allow, or Deny (with an optional reason). Answering here or in the agent’s conversation answers both. A call to one of PDT’s own tools from an agent that can’t ask in its own prompt shows here too, with its arguments: in a conversation it is also a card in the conversation, and the agent waits for your answer. From a terminal session it waits only here, and the agent hears the result once you answer. When the PM proposes decisions on your ticket proposals, they wait here as one table: untick the rows you don’t want, then Allow the rest (see Decide Inbox items).
Stuck
- Stalled: a workflow step’s agent stopped without saying it was done, and the nudges and fresh session of When an agent is stuck didn’t get it going. Nudge reminds it (optionally in your words); Take over finishes the step with the outcome you pick.
- Loop limit: a step has gone round as often as it may (a review that keeps sending work back, say). Its passes are listed with each one’s outcome. Allow one more round, pick the outcome yourself, or stop.
- Timed out: a step ran out of time. Resume runs it again (with an optional note), Stop leaves it.
To act on
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Unheard notices: pull request trouble (CI failed, a conflict, out of the merge queue) with no agent running to hear it (see Pull request and CI status). Open ticket to deal with it; it clears once the pull request is fixed or merged.
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Sessions waiting: a session is waiting on you in its terminal or conversation. Open session goes there; looking at it clears the item.
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Connect GitHub while PDT needs a GitHub login to follow your pull requests, and Sign in to … again while an MCP server’s sign-in no longer works (see MCP servers).
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PDT can’t save changes: its disk is full (with how much is free) or its database can’t be written. Workflow runs, events and what agents say in conversations wait meanwhile (conversations carry on as normal), and what you change says “PDT can’t save changes” instead of saving. Free up space; PDT saves again on its own within seconds, starts what waited, and the item goes.
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Low disk space: a disk with PDT’s data or a project is running out of space (with how much is free). Open Storage shows what each worktree takes; Clean all finished removes finished tickets’ build output. When it is almost full, pickup pauses too (auto-start starts no new tickets). The item goes once there is more space (see Disk space).
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Triaged tickets: a workflow drafted a ticket from a new issue. Approve moves it to To do, Reject to Won’t do (moving it on the board does the same).
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Ticket proposals: an agent filed a ticket while it worked (a follow-up a Coder or QA found). It waits in Draft, off the board, until you decide. The item shows the ticket’s title and description, which agent proposed it, the ticket it was working on (with a link) and the agent’s reason. Choose:
- Accept to Todo or Accept to backlog (Ready). Tick Label it agentic first if agents may pick it up (it’s unticked to start with). Edit changes the title, description, priority and labels before you accept.
- Duplicate of…: pick the ticket it repeats. It goes to Won’t do, linked to that ticket.
- Reject: it goes to Won’t do.
The optional reason goes to the agent with your decision: in its session if it’s still running, otherwise as a comment on the ticket it was working on. Tickets you or the PM make, and parts from Make into parts, aren’t proposals. To let agents’ tickets go straight to the board, turn off the Ticket proposals workflow (see Workflows). With many waiting, the PM can propose a decision for each and you confirm them together (see Decide Inbox items).
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Workflow proposals: an agent (the PM, say) changed one of your workflows. The item shows their note and what changed. Accept makes it the current version, Discard sets it aside, Versions shows the whole change in the workflow’s Versions tab. The item goes once you decide, or when a newer proposal replaces it.
Ready to accept
- Review and QA passed a ticket’s work and it waits for you before merging. Accepting shows the pull request, its CI and the change’s size first; a rejection’s note goes back to the coding agent.
- Gates: a workflow wants your decision, or it’s your turn to do a step by hand. The full question is shown formatted, with its links, and the links row has its pull request (merge request on GitLab). Pick a choice; the optional note goes on the ticket as your comment, so a “no” can say what to change.
Dismiss closes a question, stalled item or notice you don’t need. Answered and dismissed items go; open ones stay however old they are.
From your phone
The Inbox is a list with Needs you and Updates. Review all goes through the items one at a time, each with the same layout as on a computer, and its choices in a bar at the bottom (the main one on the right). Answering shows the next; swipe sideways to skip; “All clear” means you’re done. The bell in the top bar shows the count and opens the Inbox from anywhere.
To reach PDT from your phone, see Remote access.
Notifications
In Settings › Notifications, each kind of notification shows as:
- Off or Dot only (a marker on the session or ticket);
- Inbox: a row in the Inbox;
- Inbox and toast: also a pop-up while PDT is open;
- Desktop notification: also a system notification while PDT is in the background.
Each level includes the ones before it. Things that wait on you never go below Inbox.
The same page has rules you can turn on:
- Escalate what waits: something still unanswered in the Inbox after a while (2 hours unless you change it) comes back as a desktop notification, and goes to your chat channel if you set one.
- Quiet hours: between two times (22:00 to 07:00 unless you change them), nothing pops up. What would have been a toast or a desktop notification waits in the Inbox, and one summary comes when quiet hours end.
- Chat channel: questions, approvals and failed workflow runs are posted to a chat channel, such as a Discord webhook. You can pick which of the three are posted. It’s there while a plugin that posts notifications (Discord) is on.
All of this is the Notification rules workflow, and the page sets it for you. To go further (different levels for one project, a rule of your own), use Customize as a workflow →. Once you change the workflow beyond these settings, the page says Notifications follow your customized workflow and offers Open and Reset to default. Turn the workflow off and every kind shows at PDT’s default level, with none of the rules.
Desktop notifications are per device: turn on Desktop notifications under This device on each one and allow them when the browser asks. Test sends one; clicking a notification opens what it’s about.
The tab’s title and icon
PDT’s browser tab shows when something is waiting:
- the title starts with the Inbox count:
(3) PDT; - the icon gets a dot: red when an agent session needs you, amber when anything else waits in the Inbox, blue when an agent or run finished and you haven’t looked, or the PM replied. An agent still waiting on background tasks hasn’t finished yet.