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Linear urgent unassigned issue triage sentinel

Audit Linear issues via GraphQL API for urgent unassigned bugs and dispatch high-priority Slack alerts to on-call engineers to meet customer response SLAs.

Categories
BusinessInfrastructure

Prevent critical production bugs and customer escalations from languishing unaddressed in project backlogs. In high-velocity engineering organizations using Linear, critical issues with urgent priority (priority: 1) are frequently submitted by support reps, customer success teams, or automated monitoring alerts without an assigned engineer, causing response times to slip past client SLAs. This blueprint runs a frequent 15-minute triage sweep via Linear's GraphQL API (io.kestra.plugin.graphql.Request), filters for open urgent issues lacking an assignee, and sends an actionable Slack alert with direct ticket links to on-call teams.

How it works

  1. A Schedule trigger initiates a triage audit every 15 minutes (shipped disabled by default).
  2. Task fetch_urgent_unassigned_issues issues a GraphQL query to https://api.linear.app/graphql authenticated with LINEAR_API_KEY. The query applies a compound filter matching priority: 1, assignee: { null: true }, and active issue states (excluding completed and canceled) for the specified team key.
  3. Task evaluate_unassigned_issues (io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.If) counts discovered tickets:
    • If any urgent unassigned tickets exist: Task alert_urgent_unassigned delivers a formatted Slack alert itemizing issue identifiers (ENG-123), titles, and direct URLs. If fail_on_unassigned_urgent is enabled, task halt_triage_gate terminates the run with an error to trip external alert monitors.
    • If none exist: Task log_triage_healthy logs that the triage queue is healthy.
  4. Task log_audit_summary logs the count of evaluated urgent tickets.
  5. Top-level errors handler dispatches a notification if the Linear API returns network or authentication errors.

What you get

  • Continuous automated surveillance of unassigned critical tickets in Linear.
  • Guaranteed fast incident handoff to on-call engineering leads.
  • Clickable Slack digests enabling engineers to claim and assign tickets directly.
  • Measurable reduction in mean time to response (MTTR) for customer-reported bugs.

Who it's for

  • Engineering Managers and On-Call Technical Leads triaging incoming defect queues.
  • Customer Support and Solutions Engineers ensuring bug reports are promptly assigned.
  • Incident Response Coordinators managing severity-1 escalations.

Why orchestrate this with Kestra

Managing triage SLAs through manual dashboard reviews leads to missed tickets during sprint planning or off-hours. Kestra provides a resilient, version-controlled automation loop that queries Linear's GraphQL schema directly, handles secure API credentials, formats structured notifications with jq expressions, and guarantees operational visibility across engineering teams.

Prerequisites

  • A Linear workspace and personal API key with read permissions.
  • A Slack Incoming Webhook URL.

Secrets

  • LINEAR_API_KEY: Linear API key passed in the Authorization header.
  • SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL: Slack Incoming Webhook URL used to receive triage alerts.

Quick start

  1. Generate a Linear personal API key under Settings > My Account > Security & Access.
  2. Store LINEAR_API_KEY and SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL in Kestra Secrets.
  3. Configure team_key with your Linear team identifier (e.g. ENG).
  4. Execute the flow manually in Kestra to verify the GraphQL query succeeds.
  5. Enable the recurring_triage_sweep schedule to activate 15-minute triage monitoring.

How to extend

  • Add an automated assignment mutation via GraphQL to automatically assign unassigned urgent tickets to the active on-call engineer fetched from PagerDuty.
  • Integrate with Jira or Zendesk to synchronize priority statuses across multi-platform support desks.
  • Track unassigned queue duration over time to generate weekly triage velocity reports.

Links

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