Commands reference

Queuebird has one command, /qb, plus three things that need no command at all: pasting a PR link, DM’ing the bot a link, and @-mentioning it.

Three rules that cover almost everything

Queuebird only sees channels it has joined. In a public channel, /qb setup joins it for you. In a private one, run /invite @Queuebird first, because Slack does not let apps join private channels on their own. Working on your own needs no invite at all.

Most commands need your GitHub account linked. Run /qb link once. Until then, /qb replies with a short prompt. Pasting PR links still works either way, so the queue never loses a PR just because the person who pasted it has not linked.

Team features need an active plan. A trial starts when Queuebird is installed. If the plan lapses, your personal TRACKING list and your own App Home keep working. The shared queue and the daily digest pause.

Quick reference

Two words worth knowing before the details. A maintainer is someone named on a channel’s settings as looking after it. Whoever sets a new channel up becomes its first maintainer, and maintainers can add more. An admin is whoever installed Queuebird, or anyone who is a Slack admin or owner.

Getting a PR reviewed

Paste a link

No command. Drop a GitHub PR link into a review channel and Queuebird reacts 📥 and tracks it.

This is how most PRs arrive. Everything below is for when you want to do something more specific.

/qb add <pr-url> [@people] [@team] [urgent]

Put a PR in the queue, and optionally ask particular people or teams to look at it.

/qb add https://github.com/acme/web/pull/42
/qb add https://github.com/acme/web/pull/42 @maya
/qb add https://github.com/acme/web/pull/42 @platform urgent

The first tracks the PR. The second also asks Maya. The third marks it urgent and sends it to the platform team’s queue.

Good to know

• The parts can go in any order.
• Mention several teams and the PR lands in every one of their queues, each with its own clock and its own escalation. You are never asked to pick one.
• Works from anywhere, including a DM with the bot.
• Run it again later to ask more people. It will not post a second card.

@Queuebird <pr-url> [team] [urgent] [note]

Same as /qb add, but as a normal message, so you can add a note.

@Queuebird https://github.com/acme/web/pull/42 needs a second opinion on the retry logic

A note puts a 📝 marker on the card so reviewers know there is context. The note text itself is never stored.

Pasting a link also tracks it for you

When you paste a PR link into a queue channel, or add one with /qb add, Queuebird also puts it in your own TRACKING list — unless you are its author, in which case it is already under Your PRs. You get the merged or closed DM for it without doing anything else.

Nothing about this is shared: TRACKING is yours alone, and it works whether or not you have linked a GitHub account.

DM a link to Queuebird

Track a PR just for yourself. It shows up under TRACKING in your App Home and no team surface ever sees it.

Useful for watching someone else’s PR, or for trying Queuebird before setting up a channel. If you stop tracking one by accident, DM the link again to bring it back.

Keeping the queue moving

/qb park <pr-url>

Put a PR on hold and stop its clock. The time it had left is saved for when it comes back.

/qb park https://github.com/acme/web/pull/42

Use this when a PR is genuinely waiting on something, not when your team is finished with it.

Good to know

• Parking pauses it for everyone. If several teams were asked, all their clocks stop, each keeping its own remaining time.
• Restoring from any one team’s queue brings them all back.
• The PR’s author can always park and restore their own PR, even without any channel rights.
• Also available under ⋯ Actions on a card.

🤝 Hand off to… (card menu)

Move a review to a named teammate. They are claimed and DM’d, and your own claim is released.

Available to whoever currently holds the review, and to a channel maintainer on a triage card.

Good to know

• Queuebird only accepts someone who can see the PR’s channel, has linked their GitHub account, is not the PR author, and is not marked away. Anyone else is refused with the reason.
• The PR never sits without a reviewer for even an instant: your teammate is claimed before you are released, so the escalation ladder does not fire in between.
• There is no way to hand off a parked PR. Restore it first.

/qb skip <pr-url>

Say your team is not needed on this PR. It leaves your queue and every other team carries on.

/qb skip https://github.com/acme/web/pull/42

The difference in one line. Park pauses the PR. Skip removes one team from it.

Nothing is saved when you skip. If your team is asked again later, the clock starts fresh and the history shows both the skip and the re-ask.

/qb hide <pr-url>

Take a PR off the board without untracking it. Same rules as park, but nothing is banked and no clock is paused.

/qb parked

List the PRs on hold that you can see, each with a ▶️ Restore button.

Good to know

• You see PRs from channels you are in or maintain, plus any PR you are involved with. Admins see all of them.
• This is the only place a hidden PR can be restored from.
• Long lists stop at 48 rows. Restore some to see the rest.

Looking things up

/qb history <pr-url>

See everything that happened to a PR, in order.

/qb history https://github.com/acme/web/pull/42

When it arrived and who added it, every review, claim and release, every nudge, parks and restores, urgency changes, breaches, and how it ended.

Good to know

• The same view is under ⋯ Actions → 📜 History on a card.
• It shows team activity only. Personal things like your snoozes and quiet hours never appear.
• Works for PRs you track privately by DM too.
• History lasts as long as the PR. Once a PR is merged, closed, or its channel retired, the record is deleted 90 days later, as the privacy policy promises.

What a card tells you

Each card carries the PR’s title, its repo, its author, its age against the SLA clock, its size, and its CI state. Two more appear when they apply:

• ⚠️ conflicts — GitHub has reported that the PR no longer merges cleanly into its base branch. It shows only when GitHub is certain; while GitHub is still working the answer out the card stays quiet rather than guessing.
• 👀 names — who is currently reviewing it.

An approved PR that sits unmerged gets a nudge to its author. If it has conflicts, the nudge says so instead of asking whether something is blocking.

/qb stats [4w|8w|12w]

Post this channel’s review numbers, with charts and export buttons.

/qb stats
/qb stats 12w

Defaults to the last 4 weeks. Queue channels only.

Good to know

• Channel maintainers and admins can run this without linking, since the numbers post to the channel for everyone anyway.
• The export buttons here give you this channel’s weekly totals. For your actual PR data, use /qb export.

/qb export

Get your data out. Queuebird DMs you a JSON file and a CSV you can open in a spreadsheet.

/qb export

What you get. Every PR you can already see in the app, with its reviews, claims and history, plus every PR you track privately.

Good to know

• It works on every plan, including expired ones. Nobody pays to get their data back.
• You do not need a linked account if you maintain a queue channel, are an admin, or track anything privately.
• Personal settings are never included: no snoozes, no quiet hours, no notification preferences.
• Open and parked PRs are always there. Archived ones go back as far as the 90-day retention still holds them.
• Very large workspaces are capped at 5,000 PRs, newest first. The DM tells you if a cap applied, and an admin can ask support for the full dump.
• One export a minute each, two a minute for the whole workspace.

Setting up a channel

/qb setup queue

Turn this channel into a review queue. PR links pasted here go into the shared team queue.

/qb setup queue

Good to know

• Any linked member can do this. No admin needed.
• In a public channel the bot joins by itself. In a private one it asks you to /invite @Queuebird first, and nothing is created until it is in.
• On a brand-new channel, whoever runs it becomes the first maintainer and the settings open straight away.

/qb config history

Who changed this channel’s settings, when, and what moved. Newest first.

/qb config history

Every save and every retirement is recorded with the person who made it and the before-and-after of each setting that actually changed. A save that changed nothing records nothing.

Good to know

• Any linked member of the channel can read it, including people who are not allowed to change a thing. A record only its own authors can see is not worth keeping.
• Changing a channel’s role between queue and intake is recorded here too, and so is retiring it. A first-time setup is not: there was nothing before it to compare against.
• A retired channel still answers, which is where you go to find out who retired it.
• It only goes back as far as this feature; changes made before it exists were never recorded.

/qb setup intake

Turn this channel into a front door. Links pasted here are routed on to the right team’s queue instead of being reviewed here.

/qb setup intake

Routing uses the team tag someone mentions, who owns the repo, or simply the only queue you have. Same joining rules as /qb setup queue.

/qb config

Change how this channel behaves: how long a PR may wait, who gets chased and when, who may change what, the weekly recap, and more.

/qb config

Every field is explained in Settings and configuration. Who is allowed to save is itself one of the settings, and admins always can.

Good to know

• Keeps working after a plan lapses, so your settings stay current. They take effect again when the plan does.
• Intake channels get a shorter version with one field.

/qb backfill [days]

Find PR links people pasted before the channel was set up, and track them.

/qb backfill
/qb backfill 30

You get a preview first. Up to 10 finds come with a checkbox each; more than that gets a single Track all button.

Good to know

• Defaults to the last 7 days, up to 30.
• Only PRs that are still open and not already tracked are offered.
• Needs the GitHub connection first. See /qb github.

/qb retire

Stop using this channel as a queue. Its PRs are archived and it leaves the rotation.

/qb retire

It always asks first, naming how many PRs retiring would archive. Nothing happens until you confirm.

Nothing is deleted.

Good to know

• Whoever can edit the channel’s settings can retire it, which by default is any linked member of the channel. Admins always can.
• It is recorded in /qb config history, with who did it, and that record stays readable afterwards.

Your account

/qb link [github-login]

Connect your GitHub account. This is what unlocks Queuebird, because it is how the app knows which PRs are yours and where to reach you.

/qb link
/qb link ernisz

Queuebird checks you really own the account. It gives you a short code to enter at github.com, and links whatever GitHub confirms. The name you type is only your expectation.

Good to know

• One GitHub account per person, one person per account.
• Because links are proven, proof wins. If someone claimed your login first, verifying takes it back and they are told.
• Your already-tracked PRs move from TRACKING into Your PRs.

/qb unlink

Disconnect your GitHub account.

Your team sections empty, reviews you had claimed go back to the team, and your seat frees up. Your TRACKING list and your settings stay. Working hours reset, because they are stored with the link.

/qb help

A short reminder of these commands.

For workspace admins

/qb github

Connect your GitHub organisation. One admin does this once for the whole team.

/qb github

This is what lets Queuebird read reviews, approvals and CI, so cards fill in and clocks run. Without it, pasted links are tracked but stay bare.

If the connection breaks partway, the page shows a 6-digit code. Finish with /qb github code 123456.

/qb plan

See your plan: the trial or grace countdown, how many seats are in use, and what happens next.

Channel maintainers can read this too, even before linking, so they can see when the team needs more seats.

/qb unlink @user

Disconnect someone else’s GitHub account. They get a DM explaining what happened.

Deactivating someone in Slack unlinks them automatically.

Anyone can mark a PR urgent

Any member who can see a card can mark it ‼️ urgent, or clear it. This is deliberately the one action open to everyone.

Marking urgent restarts the clock on a much shorter window and tells the channel however its urgent policy says to.

Need something that is not here? Email support@queuebird.dev.