Notification

A notification is a real-time message sent by an AI agent to a human, informing them of progress, blockers, or completed work. Unlike an approval request that blocks the agent until the human responds, a notification is typically informational — the agent may continue working while the human reviews it.

Purpose of Notifications

Notifications serve several roles in agent workflows:

→ Progress updates — "I've finished the refactor, running tests now"
→ Completion signals — "All 47 tests are passing, PR is ready for review"
→ Blocking alerts — "I encountered a permission error and need your help"
→ Decision requests — "I found two approaches — which do you prefer?"

They keep humans informed without requiring constant manual check-ins.

Notifications vs. Approvals

	Notification	Approval
Agent behavior	Continues working	Waits for response
Human action required	Optional	Required
Use case	FYI updates	Permission gates

Notifications in AgentRQ

AgentRQ delivers agent notifications in real time to your task board via SSE. When a Claude Code agent calls the reply MCP tool, the message appears instantly — no polling, no delays.

You can configure notifications per workspace and receive them on any device that's connected to your AgentRQ session.

Designing Good Notifications

→ Be specific — "Tests failed: 3 failures in auth module" beats "something went wrong"
→ Include context — Tell the human what the agent was doing when the notification fired
→ Signal what's needed — Make it clear whether a response is required or it's just informational
→ Don't over-notify — Too many notifications train humans to ignore them