Periodical monitoring status pushed to external systems?

Can we get a way to send x min status updates (or when something has changed) to external "things" (chat/email/etc.)? It doesn't have to be two ways.. just getting information is fine for now..

I find my self setting off multi issue work that is just running on my computer.. I leave the house and just hope its still running.. or am coming constantly back to the computer to see if its finished...

Just getting the following would be awesome:

"Still working on 123. Parker is fixing tests as he has been doing last 10 minutes"
"All work on 123 is done. Team has started on 321"

If I could get periodical information on what is going on in e.g. a Team channel I would be super happy and could be doing something more productive in the meantime like doing the laundry 😅

Merge pull request github#308 from bradygaster/squad/wave1-remaining

chore(.squad): Wave 2 launch — REPL polish, security fix, config extr…

@telemetry

Triage: Feature request for periodic status updates to external systems (chat/email). Nice-to-have for observability. P2 backlog. Relates to monitoring and notifications — good fit for @telemetry.

📋 Assigned to Telemetry (Aspire & Observability)

Issue: #308 — Periodical monitoring status pushed to external systems?

Telemetry will pick this up in the next Copilot session.

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Otherwise, start a Copilot session and say:
Telemetry, work on issue #308

📋 Assigned to Telemetry (Aspire & Observability)

Issue: #308 — Periodical monitoring status pushed to external systems?

Telemetry will pick this up in the next Copilot session.

For Copilot coding agent: If enabled, this issue will be worked automatically.
Otherwise, start a Copilot session and say:
Telemetry, work on issue #308

Solution: Ralph Loop + External Notifications

We actually have most of the pieces for this already:

What exists today

Ralph's in-session loop — scans for work, acts, repeats. Already implemented.
squad watch (npx @bradygaster/squad-cli watch --interval N) — standalone local process that polls GitHub every N minutes while you're away.
squad-heartbeat.yml — GitHub Actions cron for fully unattended monitoring.

What's missing: the notification layer

The gap is pushing status updates to external systems. Here's the proposed approach:

Option A: Webhook-based (simplest)

// .squad/config.json
{
  "notifications": {
    "webhook": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/...",
    "events": ["issue_closed", "pr_merged", "round_complete"],
    "interval": "on_change"
  }
}

Ralph's loop (and squad watch) would POST a JSON payload to the webhook URL whenever something changes. This works with Slack, Teams, Discord, or any webhook-compatible service.

Option B: MCP-based (richer)
If the user has a Teams/Slack MCP server configured, Ralph could post directly to a channel. We already have MCP integration patterns for this.

⚠️ Actions minutes warning

If using the GitHub Actions heartbeat for this, be aware that cron jobs consume Actions minutes. At a 5-minute interval, that's ~8,640 minutes/month. GitHub Free gives 2,000 minutes/month. We should:

Default to a conservative interval (30 min)
Show estimated monthly minutes in the setup flow
Recommend squad watch (local, free) over Actions for frequent polling

Want us to pick this up? The webhook approach is probably the quickest win.

🔄 Ralph status: Feature — external system monitoring push. No PR. Backlog.

Closing as I think between watch, loop, and the upcoming ideas around dispatch, we've covered the ability for "squad to run in an agentic loop in various ways."

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Periodical monitoring status pushed to external systems? #308

📋 Assigned to Telemetry (Aspire & Observability)

📋 Assigned to Telemetry (Aspire & Observability)

Solution: Ralph Loop + External Notifications

What exists today

What's missing: the notification layer

⚠️ Actions minutes warning

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Periodical monitoring status pushed to external systems? #308

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bradygaster commented on Mar 10, 2026

github-actions commented on Mar 10, 2026

📋 Assigned to Telemetry (Aspire & Observability)

github-actions commented on Mar 13, 2026

📋 Assigned to Telemetry (Aspire & Observability)

bradygaster commented on Mar 22, 2026

Solution: Ralph Loop + External Notifications

What exists today

What's missing: the notification layer

⚠️ Actions minutes warning

diberry commented on Mar 31, 2026

bradygaster commented on Apr 12, 2026

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