Overview
The “Needs you” inbox is the one place for decisions that need you, right now — kept deliberately separate from the work backlog. It answers a different question than the backlog does:
| Backlog | “Needs you” inbox | |
|---|---|---|
| Holds | Work to schedule — features, bugs, chores | Business decisions to make now — money, public actions, and judgment calls |
| Answers | “What should we build next?” | “What needs me, and why can’t my digital team finish it?” |
| Cadence | Planned, prioritized, eventually built | Blocking, time-sensitive, perishable |
| Lives on | Operations | Your Workspace |
Folding “a human must decide this now” into the backlog is a category error: the two have different owners, cadence, and half-lives. The inbox gives time-sensitive decisions their own home so they don’t get buried under planned work.
Key Concepts
- Only owner decisions reach the daily count. Routine platform recovery, missing credentials, stalled builds, and service health stay with your digital team. They appear only if they create a real business choice for you.
- Money and public actions always come to you. A proactivity setting can change how routine work is handled, but it cannot bypass approval when money leaves the business or something goes public.
- Every card explains the decision. The top of the card gives a short question; for a blocked coworker, a plain line saying what it was doing and why it stalled; a concrete impact (“if ignored…”); the recommendation with the specialist it came from; and no more than three plain choices. It never invents a confidence score.
- Technical detail is preserved. Open Technical detail to see the original title, source, work fields, linked identifiers, detection details, and builder actions. That information is moved one click down, not deleted.
- A projection, not another queue. The inbox is a read-only view over each area’s own records; it is not a second backlog or ticket tracker. Acting on an item updates the record in its home area.
- An empty inbox is a good day. When nothing needs a decision, the inbox shows “You’re all caught up” — and, when relevant, a short summary of what your digital team is handling on its own. An empty inbox is reassurance, not an unfinished list.
What Shows Up Here
- Approvals — bills and expense claims awaiting sign-off, outbound messages pending review, and regulatory submissions with a filing deadline.
- Business judgment — a coworker cannot continue safely without your choice.
- Bounded coworker proposals — a coworker recommends taking more initiative within a stated limit; you can accept it, keep the current level, or ask for a narrower limit.
- Friday review — low-urgency research and improvement suggestions are grouped together instead of interrupting the daily inbox.
What You Can Do
- Review the business decision using the plain action on the card. Builder-only links never appear as the main owner action.
- Accept, keep, or narrow a proactivity boundary without leaving the workspace.
- Open Technical detail when a builder or specialist needs the full source record.
- Clear or snooze the Friday review as one batch, or review an item individually.
- Ask your digital coworker for a briefing on what is in the inbox and why.
Deadline-bearing items show a plain tag such as Due today or Due in 3 days. Impact tags use words such as Costs money, Goes public, and Reversible.
Derived from the Attention Surface foundation and the cognitive-load redesign. This user guide is the owner-facing view; the specs hold the full rationale and non-goals.