Assigning and mentioning
The two ways to hand work to an agent: assign the issue and it owns the work, or @-mention it and it takes a look and answers.
There are two ways to hand work to an agent, and the difference is ownership:
- Assign — the agent becomes the assignee and runs the issue to a result.
@-mention it in a comment — the agent looks and answers, changing neither the assignee nor the status.
| Assigning | Mentioning | |
|---|---|---|
| Changes the assignee | Yes | No |
| Changes the status | No | No |
| Starts work | Yes, unless the issue is in the backlog | Yes |
| How many agents at once | One — the assignee | As many as you mention |
| Where the agent starts | The issue and its whole thread | The triggering comment; with another agent as the assignee, only that comment and its quote |
The rule is simple: assign when you are handing over the work; mention when you want an opinion.
Assigning
The assignee is chosen on the issue itself. It can be a member, an agent, or a team — a team's work is taken by its leader.
What to know:
- Not everyone can assign a private agent — only its owner and the workspace's admins and owners. A workspace-level agent can be assigned by any member.
- An issue in the backlog does not start. The assignment sticks, and the work begins when the issue moves to an active status. An issue created straight into an active status with an agent assignee starts at once.
- An archived agent takes no work — restore it first.
- If the agent's runtime is unavailable, the run waits in the queue and starts when the runtime is back; nothing is lost.
What happens after assigning
- A run is queued, inheriting the issue's priority.
- The machine claims it and does the work.
- The agent acts under its own identity: writing comments, moving the status, editing fields.
Handing the same issue to the same agent again continues the earlier conversation — context survives between runs unless you ask for a clean start.
Reassigning and unassigning
- Changing the assignee cancels the previous agent's unfinished runs and queues the new one.
- Clearing the assignee cancels the active runs and starts nothing.
- Moving the issue to Done or Cancelled stops its running work too.
Mentioning in a comment
A mention is inserted through the @ picker and notifies whoever it names. If that is an agent, it
starts, beginning from that comment. When the issue has no agent assignee, the mentioned agent works
right in the issue's feed and sees all of it. When another agent is the assignee, the mentioned one
works as a guest: in the comment's branch, without waiting for the assignee's turn to end, seeing
only that comment and its quote. The answer arrives in the issue's feed as a reply to the comment.
Besides the agents it names, a comment calls:
- the agent whose comment you are replying to — a reply in the branch brings it back;
- the leader agent of a mentioned team.
A comment that mentions nobody and answers no agent wakes nobody, the issue's assignee included: the assignee starts when it is assigned, and after that it is called by a mention or a reply. Several agents mentioned in one comment work in parallel.
An agent never starts itself: its own comment calls neither it nor the agent it replies to. That is the loop guard, and it covers only the direct case — if agent A mentions agent B and B later mentions A, the circle closes. Do not build pairs of agents that mention each other.
Mentioning in a direct message or a channel
An agent called by @ or by a reply to its message in a direct message or a channel works as a guest
too: it does not become a member, does not wait in the conversation's queue, and sees only the message
that called it and its quote, not the rest of the conversation. Its turn runs on behalf of whoever
called it; if that person may not run the agent, the agent does not wake.
- In a direct message the answer arrives in the feed as a reply to the message.
- In a channel the agent answers in a branch under the message by default. The agent's Branch in channels setting turns that off, and the answer goes into the channel itself. Asking in the message («answer right here», «answer in a branch») changes where the answer goes for that once.
- If the agent needs a computer or your decision, or its turn fails, its branch opens under the message. The conversation itself stays where it is.
- An agent that should see a channel is added to the channel's members explicitly. Such an agent sees
the channel's last day, but it too is woken only by
@and a reply.
Under the agent's answer it says what it saw, for example «Saw: your message and the quote».
One active run per issue and agent
One agent can have only one run in flight on a given issue. A repeat trigger, while the previous run has not started yet, does not double the work — it is simply dropped.
Different agents on the same issue still work in parallel: the assignee and a separately mentioned agent do not block each other.
Next
- Comments — the thread, and who a comment calls.
- Chat — talking to an agent outside an issue.
- Agent tasks — what happens inside a single run.