Route Notifications

How to Send Sortie Events to Issue Comments, Slack, and Webhooks

Decide which of Sortie’s messages reach the issue, Slack, or a webhook. Each destination is one entry in notifications, and each entry lists the events it receives. This guide also shows how to replace the deprecated tracker.comments flags and escalation: comment with the same behavior in the new form.

Prerequisites

A working workflow with a configured tracker. A tracker_comment entry needs one.
For Slack, an incoming webhook URL. For a webhook, an HTTPS endpoint that accepts a JSON POST.
Each URL in an environment variable whose name starts with SORTIE_, such as SORTIE_SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL.

Comment on the issue

Add a tracker_comment entry and list the events you want as comments:

notifications:
  - kind: tracker_comment
    events:
      - session.completed
      - session.stopped
      - session.failed

The three events cover every worker exit. Soft stops (blocked, needs-human-review, no-change-needed) are session.stopped, not session.completed, so an entry that lists only session.completed misses them. Add session.started for a comment when Sortie claims the issue.

The entry takes only kind and events. At most one tracker_comment entry is allowed, and events: [] is valid when you want no comments beyond what the deprecated settings enable.

Show the agent’s reason for stopping

When an agent stops on blocked, needs-human-review, or no-change-needed, it can write its reason on the lines after the value in .sortie/status. Sortie asks for one in the first-turn prompt it adds. The reason appears only on session.stopped, so list that event on every destination that should show it.

On the issue, the reason follows the stop text in a literal block:

Sortie session completed (agent signaled: blocked).
Duration: 12m4s
Turns: 7

```
The ticket asks for both soft and hard delete of invoices.
Which one should the API expose?
```

To make agents write a useful one for your project, say what a good reason contains in your prompt. See guide the agent to signal blocked status. The statement is the agent’s own text. Sortie masks the secrets it knows, but write the prompt so agents never put credentials in it. See what reaches a tracker comment.

Send events to Slack

Add a slack entry. List agent.message to keep the agent’s own notify_operator messages in the channel, and add the events that need a person:

notifications:
  - kind: slack
    webhook_url: $SORTIE_SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL
    events:
      - agent.message
      - session.stopped
      - session.failed
      - escalation.ci_failure
      - budget.held

Each message reads [WARNING] PROJ-42: session.failed, followed by the same text the issue comment carries. Slack messages include the agent’s stop reason with &, <, and > escaped, so it cannot ping anyone.

The agent’s own notify_operator messages are capped per agent run, and max_per_session on an entry that lists agent.message changes that cap. See the notifications reference for the exact rules.

Send events to a webhook

Add a webhook entry for a system that archives or reacts to events:

notifications:
  - kind: webhook
    url: $SORTIE_OPS_WEBHOOK_URL
    events:
      - session.started
      - session.completed
      - session.stopped
      - session.failed

Branch on the event_type key of each JSON payload. The stop reason, when there is one, arrives in agent_text. Payloads for agent.message carry neither key, so an endpoint that only handles agent messages keeps working. For the full payload, see what Slack and webhook receive.

Combine destinations

One event can go to several destinations, and each destination picks its own events:

notifications:
  - kind: tracker_comment
    events:
      - session.completed
      - session.stopped
      - session.failed

  - kind: slack
    webhook_url: $SORTIE_SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL
    events:
      - agent.message
      - session.stopped
      - session.failed
      - escalation.ci_failure
      - budget.held

  - kind: webhook
    url: $SORTIE_OPS_WEBHOOK_URL
    events:
      - session.started
      - session.completed
      - session.stopped
      - session.failed

Here agent.message reaches Slack only, because only that entry lists it. The agent’s messages never reach the issue, and agent.message is rejected on a tracker_comment entry. The agent gets the notify_operator tool only when some entry lists agent.message.

For every event name and when it fires, see the event catalog.

Get an escalation as a comment without a label

Reactions label the issue by default when they hand it to a person. To get a comment instead, or as well, subscribe to the escalation event:

reactions:
  ci_failure:
    provider: github
    escalation: none

notifications:
  - kind: tracker_comment
    events:
      - escalation.ci_failure

escalation: none skips the label. Keep escalation: label and list the event to get both. Every escalation emits its event whatever escalation says, so a Slack or webhook entry can list it too.

Move off the deprecated settings

The old settings still work and draw a warning at startup and in sortie validate. Each replacement posts the same comment. Do the steps that apply to your workflow, then write all of them into one tracker_comment entry.

If you set `tracker.comments`

Map each flag that is true to its events, then delete the comments block:

Flag	Events to list
`on_dispatch`	`session.started`
`on_completion`	`session.completed`, `session.stopped`
`on_failure`	`session.failed`

If you set `escalation: comment`

For each reaction that uses it, set escalation: none and list escalation.<kind>, for example escalation.ci_failure or escalation.merge_completion.

If you use auto-merge or a per-issue budget

The auto-merge success comment and the budget-hold comment have no setting of their own. They post while no tracker_comment entry exists, and they stop the moment you add one that omits them. Do not lose them by accident: list auto_merge.merged if you use the auto-merge reaction, and budget.held if agent.max_sessions or agent.max_tokens is above 0.

If a `slack` or `webhook` entry has no `events`

Add events: [agent.message]. That is what the entry received before.

A complete before and after

Before:

tracker:
  kind: github
  api_key: $SORTIE_GITHUB_TOKEN
  project: acme/billing-api
  comments:
    on_completion: true
    on_failure: true

agent:
  max_sessions: 3

reactions:
  ci_failure:
    provider: github
    escalation: comment

notifications:
  - kind: slack
    webhook_url: $SORTIE_SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL

After:

tracker:
  kind: github
  api_key: $SORTIE_GITHUB_TOKEN
  project: acme/billing-api

agent:
  max_sessions: 3

reactions:
  ci_failure:
    provider: github
    escalation: none

notifications:
  - kind: tracker_comment
    events:
      - session.completed
      - session.stopped
      - session.failed
      - escalation.ci_failure
      - budget.held

  - kind: slack
    webhook_url: $SORTIE_SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL
    events:
      - agent.message

You can migrate in two steps. While both forms are present, an event listed in both is still delivered once to each destination, so keeping on_completion: true next to session.completed gives one comment, not two.

Verify

Run the validator:

sortie validate WORKFLOW.md

A finished migration prints no deprecated or implicit warnings from the list below, and valid stays true. Each warning names the setting and its replacement:

tracker.comments.<flag>.deprecated
reactions.<kind>.escalation.deprecated
notifications.tracker_comment.implicit_auto_merge and notifications.tracker_comment.implicit_budget_hold
notifications[<i>].events.missing

Then trigger one real event, such as a session on a test issue, and check each destination. The run log shows tracker comment posted for the issue and a notification delivery failed warning, with the event_type and destination, for a Slack or webhook send that did not go through.

Troubleshooting

A blocked issue got no comment. The entry lists session.completed but not session.stopped. Add it.

The auto-merge or budget-hold comment disappeared after adding an entry. An explicit tracker_comment entry posts only what it lists. Add auto_merge.merged or budget.held.

sortie validate rejects the entry. The message names the rule. Common causes are a second tracker_comment entry, no tracker.kind, a missing events key on tracker_comment, or an event name the catalog does not contain. See the configuration errors.

Slack or the webhook receives nothing. For an entry that lists agent.message, check that the URL variable starts with SORTIE_; the tool server sees only variables with that prefix. Otherwise read the notification delivery failed warning, which names the destination.

A config edit did not apply. Events Sortie produces use the new entries from the next poll tick. The agent’s notify_operator messages use them from the next agent session. A reload that cannot build a destination is rejected, and the previous configuration stays in force.

Use PR Label Commands Monitor with Prometheus

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