Notifycat

Low-noise pull request notifications for Slack. One pull request gets one Slack message: as the PR opens, gets reviewed, merges, or closes, that message updates in place and collects reactions instead of posting again. The channel becomes a status board, not an event log.

Three things it's built around:

• Quiet — state changes are message updates and emoji, not new posts; dependency bumps collapse to one compact line; bot reviews can be marked or muted.
• Nothing slips through — a morning digest resurfaces PRs nobody touched yesterday, and the "Start review" button shows who's already on it.
• Easy to own — one Go binary, one declarative config.yaml, one SQLite file. The server validates its whole configuration against Slack and your git host before it will boot, and runtime needs only a webhook secret plus a Slack bot token — no GitHub App, no OAuth.

Documentation

Please visit https://mptooling.github.io/notifycat/

Quick start

Docker (recommended)

You'll need a host with Docker installed, a domain name pointing at it, inbound ports 80/443 open, and a Slack app installed in your workspace (setup). In about 10 minutes you'll have Notifycat running behind automatic HTTPS and posting PR updates to Slack.

curl -fsSL https://github.com/mptooling/notifycat/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh
cd notifycat
./notifycat setup          # interactive wizard — writes .env and config.yaml
docker compose up -d       # start Notifycat + Caddy (HTTPS via Let's Encrypt)
./notifycat doctor         # verify setup

The installer downloads a pinned, checksum-verified bundle into ./notifycat. The setup wizard prompts for your domain, Slack token, webhook secret, and first mapping. For the full walkthrough — webhook registration, a delivery smoke test, and verifying with a real PR — see Install with Docker Compose, then run through the Security & permissions checklist before go-live.

Alternative: run from source (contributors)

Most users want the one-command path above. Build from source if you're contributing or want to run without Docker.

Requires:

• Go 1.25.10 or newer (go version to check).
• git to clone the repository.
• sh and curl for the helper scripts under scripts/.
• A public URL (ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnel) only if you want your git host to deliver real webhooks to your laptop. Local CLI commands (validate / doctor) don't need one.

Six commands from "nothing" to "running":

git clone https://github.com/mptooling/notifycat.git && cd notifycat
cp .env.example .env                       # then edit: set GITHUB_WEBHOOK_SECRET, SLACK_BOT_TOKEN
cp config.example.yaml config.yaml        # then edit: database.url and real Slack channel IDs

go run ./cmd/notifycat-config validate
go run ./cmd/notifycat-doctor
go run ./cmd/notifycat-server

The binaries pick up .env from the current working directory and default to ./config.yaml and ./data/notifycat.db. See Run from source for the end-to-end walkthrough including the tunnel + webhook setup.

What you see in Slack

One message per PR: opening it posts the message, reviews land on it as reactions (✅ 💬 ❗), and merging strikes the title through. A Start review button shows who's already reviewing. Dependabot and Renovate bumps collapse to one compact line, and a morning digest resurfaces the PRs nobody touched yesterday. The full tour, message by message: What you see in Slack.

Git Provider Support

Feature	GitHub	Bitbucket
Webhook signature verification (HMAC-SHA256)	Yes	Yes
Per-path / monorepo routing	Yes (requires GITHUB_TOKEN)	Yes (requires BITBUCKET_TOKEN)
Stuck-PR digest	Yes	Yes
Reactions & review flow	Yes	Yes
Token auth	Fine-grained PAT (Bearer)	Access token (Bearer) or scoped Atlassian API token (Basic, Free-plan fallback)
App passwords	n/a	Not supported — removed by Atlassian 2026-07-28; use access tokens

A deployment serves one git host, and routing lives in the mappings: section of config.yaml — per-repository tiers with an org-wide "*" catch-all. See Configuration basics.

Development

The project includes a justfile for common development commands. Install just (brew install just on macOS), then run:

just
just check
just serve

just is a developer tool only. It is not part of the Go module, the Docker runtime image, or production dependencies.

The underlying checks are:

go vet ./...
golangci-lint run ./...
govulncheck ./...
go test -race ./...
go build ./...

See CONTRIBUTING.md for contributor setup, pull request expectations, and issue reporting guidance.

Community

• Code of conduct
• Support
• Security policy

License

MIT. See LICENSE.