Mentions Guide
Link to people, projects, workunits, and tasks inline as you write. Mentions turn typing into structured links — and notify the right person automatically.
What are Mentions?
A mention is an inline reference to a person, project, workunit, or task. When you type one, it renders as a clickable chip instead of plain text — and if you mentioned a teammate, they get a notification with a link straight to where they were named.
Mentions work in every text surface where you collaborate: workunit descriptions, task comments, signals, chat, asset notes, knowledge content, context atoms, calendar events. One pattern, everywhere.
The Four Entity Types
Mentions come in four flavors. Each gets its own color so you can scan a paragraph and immediately see what's being referenced.
Using the Picker
Anywhere you can write rich text in Workunit, typing the @ key opens the mention picker. Keep typing to filter — the picker searches across people, projects, workunits, and tasks in your organization.
- ↑ / ↓ navigate the list
- Enter or Tab select
- Esc closes the picker
- Hover to highlight a row
- Click to insert
- Click outside to dismiss
Filtering by Type
Sometimes you know what kind of thing you're looking for. Type the entity prefix followed by a colon to restrict the picker to one type — fast scoping without scrolling through unrelated results.
| Type | Prefix to type | Picker shows |
|---|---|---|
| People | @user: | Org members only |
| Projects | @project: | Active projects in the org |
| Workunits | @workunit: | Active workunits across all projects |
| Tasks | @task: | Active tasks with parent workunit as sublabel |
@ with no prefix mixes all four types in one list, ordered by relevance. Use a prefix when you've got a lot of matches and want to narrow down fast.Paste a URL, Get a Mention
Got a workunit URL from a Slack message or a browser tab? Just paste it. If the URL points at one of the four entity types in your org, it auto-converts to a canonical mention chip — same as if you'd used the picker.
abcd-...-1234) or dashless (abcd...1234) — both work, both get normalized.Who Gets Notified
Only @user mentions fire notifications. Project, workunit, and task mentions are render-only — they make text scannable, but they don't ping anyone.
@alice), they won't get a duplicate ping. The notification re-fires only if the previous one was read or it's been more than six hours.Where Mentions Work
Mentions are available in every text surface where teams collaborate:
Best Practices
Make mentions earn their notifications — and use the other three types liberally to keep text scannable.
Mention a person when you need them
Link work liberally
Paste URLs without thinking
@task: or hunt through the picker.Trust the dedup
@alice in there, don't worry about double-pinging — Workunit checks whether Alice was already notified about this entity recently and skips the duplicate.When NOT to mention
- Recap mentions: "Alice did X and Bob did Y" — they don't need a notification about their own work. Write names as plain text in retrospectives.
- Long thread cc's: If you'd cc the whole team on every reply in email, mentioning all of them in chat will do the same noisy thing. Mention only who actually needs to act.
- Self-reminders: Mentioning yourself doesn't fire anything anyway — just write a task instead if you need a reminder for later.
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Next Steps
Mentions are one piece of how teams stay coordinated. Keep going:
Patterns for preserving context, async handoffs, and team coordination across humans and AI.
Quick coordination in real time. Mentions feel especially natural in chat.
Post questions, announcements, and ideas to your team — and mention the people who should weigh in.
Break work into tasks, then mention them anywhere to link conversation back to concrete work.
Questions about mentions, notifications, or how the picker works? Ask in the community.