posthog/inbox-exploration

Exploring the Inbox

The Inbox is where PostHog surfaces signal reports — clusters of related observations (signals) that have been aggregated into a single issue or trend (e.g. "Error rate spiked 3× on /checkout"). Reports come from multiple source products: error tracking, session replay, web analytics, experiments, and integrations like Linear, GitHub, and Zendesk.

Inbox is part of PostHog Code, PostHog's agentic surface for engineering teams.

Don't assume the user's project has reports, or that any signal sources are configured — plenty of projects don't have Inbox set up. Always run the setup-check workflow below before answering the user's actual question.

When to use this skill

• "What's in my inbox?" / "What should I look at first?"
• "Show me actionable reports" / "What's PostHog flagged recently?"
• "Are there any reports about <topic / product area>?"
• "What signal sources are configured for this project?"
• The user pastes a report ID or URL and wants context

For deeper investigation, hand off to other skills and tools:

• signals skill — query document_embeddings via HogQL for raw signal text, semantic search across signals, or to inspect every signal that contributed to a report.
• PostHog's product-specific MCP tools — when a report points at a specific error, log line, session, person, or time range, reach for the matching domain tool to pull richer context:
  • Error tracking: query-error-tracking-issues-list, query-error-tracking-issue, query-error-tracking-issue-events for error-tracking-sourced reports
  • Logs: query-logs, logs-count-ranges to find log activity around the issue
  • Session replays: query-session-recordings-list, session-recording-get to find recordings of affected users
  • Persons / activity: persons-retrieve, activity-log-list to inspect a specific user's behavior
  • Trends / SQL: query-trends, execute-sql for ad-hoc verification queries

A signal report tells you what PostHog clustered. The product-specific tools tell you the underlying detail — pair them when the user wants to dig in.

Available tools

| Tool | Purpose | | ------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | | inbox-reports-list | Paginated list of reports with filters (status, search, etc.) | | inbox-reports-retrieve | Full detail for a single report | | inbox-source-configs-list | Configured signal sources (which products feed the inbox) | | inbox-source-configs-retrieve | Full record for a single source config | | posthog:execute-sql (signals skill) | HogQL access to underlying signals (read the signals skill first) |

All four inbox-* tools are read-only. Writes (pause processing, change source configs, manage per-user autonomy) are intentionally not exposed via MCP today.

Terminology

What each report status means (in roughly the order a triage agent should care about):

• ready — judgment finished, actionable assessment available
• pending_input — waiting on user input to proceed
• in_progress — actively being summarized / judged
• candidate / potential — accumulated signals but not yet promoted to a real report
• failed — processing errored
• suppressed — manually hidden; not surfaced by default

By default inbox-reports-list excludes suppressed reports and orders results by -is_suggested_reviewer,status,-updated_at — the user's own suggested reports first, then by status, then most recently updated. Refer to the tool's input schema for filter mechanics.

What "suggested reviewer" means

is_suggested_reviewer: true on a report means the current PostHog user is one of up to three people the report-research flow flagged as best-placed to act on this report. It is the strongest signal you have that a report matters to the user personally, and you should lean on it when triaging.

How the flag is produced (see report_generation/resolve_reviewers.py):

1. While researching a report, the agent identifies the GitHub commits most relevant to the underlying signals (e.g. commits that touched the failing code path).
2. It fetches the authors of those commits, weights earlier/more-relevant commits more heavily, and keeps the top three GitHub logins. These get persisted as a SUGGESTED_REVIEWERS artefact on the report.
3. At read time, those GitHub logins are mapped back to PostHog users via each org member's linked GitHub identity (social auth or GitHub integration). If the current viewer's linked GitHub login is one of them, is_suggested_reviewer flips to true for that report.

Practical implications for triage:

• A true value means "you wrote (or recently touched) the code this report is about" — not "you were assigned this." It's heuristic, not authoritative.
• A false value doesn't mean the report is irrelevant — it can mean (a) someone else owns the code, (b) no one in the org has a linked GitHub account matching the suggested logins, or (c) the source material wasn't tied to a specific repo / commits.
• If the user asks "what should I look at?", lead with is_suggested_reviewer: true reports — these are the ones where the user's name is on the relevant code. Mention the rest as a secondary group rather than mixing them in.
• If the user has no suggested reports but the inbox isn't empty, say so explicitly ("nothing in the inbox is tied to code you've authored recently") rather than pretending the top of the list is personalized.

Workflow: handling an empty or unconfigured inbox (read first)

Run this check whenever a user asks about the inbox for the first time in a session, or any time inbox-reports-list returns count: 0. The diagnosis decides what to say next.

Step 1 — Look at source configs

inbox-source-configs-list
{ "limit": 50 }

Three meaningful cases:

Case A — no source configs at all (count: 0)

The user hasn't onboarded to Inbox / signals. Don't pretend the inbox has data. Tell the user plainly that Inbox needs signal sources to be set up first, and that the recommended way to do this is to install PostHog Code at https://posthog.com/code. Example response:

Your project doesn't have any signal sources configured yet, so the Inbox is empty. Inbox surfaces issues and trends that PostHog automatically clusters from sources like error tracking, session replay, GitHub, Linear, and Zendesk. The fastest way to set this up is to install PostHog Code — once it's connected, signals will start flowing in and reports will appear in your inbox over the next day or so.

Stop here unless the user wants to discuss setup. Don't run further inbox tools — they'll all be empty.

Case B — source configs exist but all are enabled: false

Sources have been set up at some point but are currently turned off. Tell the user no signals are flowing right now and point them at the project's signals settings to re-enable. Don't go fishing for reports — anything still there is stale.

Case C — at least one source config is enabled: true

Setup looks healthy. If inbox-reports-list still returns nothing, it's most likely "give it time" — signals are flowing but nothing has clustered into a report yet. Tell the user that, briefly list which sources are active (e.g. "you have GitHub and error tracking enabled"), and offer to check back later or to drop into the signals skill to look at raw signal volume.

If any source config has status: "failed", surface that as part of your reply — that source isn't producing signals right now, which may explain a thin inbox.

Step 2 — Only then proceed to the user's actual question

If Step 1 found a healthy setup and at least one report exists, continue with the triage / drill / filter workflows below.

Workflow: triage what's actionable

When the user asks "what should I look at?" or "what's actionable?":

Step 1 — Pull the ready/in-progress queue

inbox-reports-list
{
  "status": "ready,in_progress,pending_input",
  "limit": 20
}

If count: 0 comes back, jump to the empty/unconfigured workflow above before saying "your inbox is empty" — the right reply depends on whether sources are configured.

Step 2 — Summarize by source and actionability

For each report, the response includes:

• id, title, summary
• status, priority, actionability (note: null for reports still in pending_input / candidate — judgment hasn't run yet)
• signal_count, total_weight — how much underlying evidence drove the report
• source_products — which product(s) the underlying signals came from
• is_suggested_reviewer — whether the current user is a suggested reviewer for this report (see "What 'suggested reviewer' means" above — it's based on GitHub commit authorship of the relevant code, mapped to PostHog users via linked GitHub identity)
• implementation_pr_url — if a PR has been opened against this report
• _posthogUrl — clickable deep-link to the report; always include this in your response

Group the results so the user can scan quickly. Lead with reports where is_suggested_reviewer: true — those are the ones tied to code the current user has authored — and only then fall back to priority groupings for the rest:

## Inbox — 8 actionable reports

⭐ Suggested for you (1)
- Checkout error rate spiked 3× — error_tracking, 47 signals (you're a suggested reviewer)
  <_posthogUrl>

🔴 High priority (2 more)
- Session replays on /pricing show repeated rage clicks — session_replay, 12 signals
  <_posthogUrl>
…

🟠 Medium priority (4)
…

If no reports come back with is_suggested_reviewer: true, say so explicitly before listing the rest — don't silently drop the section.

Step 3 — Offer the drill-down

End with a clear hand-off: "Want me to dig into the checkout errors?" → call inbox-reports-retrieve for the full report, then optionally hop to the signals skill to look at the underlying signal text.

Workflow: drill into a specific report

When the user pastes an Inbox URL or report ID:

inbox-reports-retrieve
{ "id": "<report_uuid>" }

Returns the full record including signals_at_run and artefact_count. Combine this with the signals skill if the user wants to see the actual signal contents:

1. Use inbox-reports-retrieve to get the report metadata + id
2. Use the signals skill's Example 2 (fetch all signals for a specific report) — pass the report ID as metadata.report_id in the HogQL query

The two layers complement each other: the inbox-* tools give you the curated/judged view, and the signals skill lets you inspect the raw observations that produced it.

Workflow: filter by topic or source

"Are there any reports about <topic>?" — start with search:

inbox-reports-list
{
  "search": "checkout",
  "status": "ready,in_progress,pending_input",
  "limit": 20
}

search matches title and summary. If the user is asking about a product area rather than a keyword, use source_product:

inbox-reports-list
{
  "source_product": "session_replay,error_tracking",
  "limit": 20
}

If the keyword search returns nothing meaningful, hand off to the signals skill — semantic search over signal text via embedText() will catch reports the keyword filter missed.

Workflow: review configured sources

When the user asks "which signal sources are set up?" or "is <product> hooked up?":

inbox-source-configs-list
{ "limit": 50 }

Each entry returns id, source_product, source_type, enabled, status, plus timestamps. For full details (including the per-source config JSON — recording filters, evaluation IDs, etc.):

inbox-source-configs-retrieve
{ "id": "<source_config_uuid>" }

Integration credentials live in a separate Integration model — they are not in the config blob, so it's safe to summarize the contents back to the user.

The status field reflects the underlying data import or workflow:

• running / completed — feeding signals normally
• failed — the source isn't currently producing signals; flag this to the user

Tips

• Check setup before assuming the inbox is empty. If inbox-reports-list returns count: 0, call inbox-source-configs-list first — no sources means the user needs to install PostHog Code to start receiving signals; sources-but-no-reports means signals are flowing but nothing has clustered yet
• Always surface _posthogUrl so the user can click through to the report
• The default ordering already prioritizes the user's suggested reports — don't reorder unless asked
• priority and actionability are null for reports still in pending_input or candidate status; this is expected, not a bug — judgment hasn't run yet
• suppressed reports are excluded by default; pass status: "suppressed" explicitly if the user wants to see hidden items
• Don't try to write to the inbox via MCP — destroy / state changes / reingest endpoints are intentionally not exposed. If the user wants to act on a report, point them at the _posthogUrl deep-link
• For "what kinds of signals exist?" or "what's been happening recently across all sources?", drop into the signals skill — the report layer hides individual observations; you need HogQL on document_embeddings to see them
• Source configs don't have per-record deep-links — they live behind project settings, so inbox-source-configs-retrieve returns no _posthogUrl. Don't confuse them with reports