Notification channels

τ-mux has three notification surfaces and one forwarding hop. Here’s how they relate.

The three surfaces

1. System notifications — ht notify --title … --body … triggers a native macOS notification banner. The user sees it even if τ-mux isn’t focused.
2. Sidebar pile — every notification is also logged to the sidebar so you can see history without leaving the app.
3. Sidebar log entries — ht log "…" posts an entry to the workspace log. Same surface as notifications but lighter — no native banner, no Telegram forwarding.

The Telegram hop

When Settings → Telegram → Forward notifications is enabled, every notification.create call (including ht notify) is also forwarded to the configured Telegram chat.

ht notify ──┬─→ macOS notification banner
            ├─→ τ-mux sidebar pile
            └─→ Telegram chat (if forwarding on)

ht log does NOT trigger Telegram forwarding — it’s intentionally local-only.

When to use what

Scenario	Use
”Tests broke, drop everything”	ht notify --level error --title "Tests" --body "5 failed" — banner + Telegram forwards.
”Build progress update”	ht set-progress 0.5 --label "Compiling" + ht set-status build "Compiling" — silent, sidebar-only.
”Quick log entry”	ht log --level success --source build "compiled" — no banner, no Telegram, just sidebar.
”Heavy lifting done while away”	ht notify --title "Done" --body "deploy succeeded" --sound finish — banner + sound + Telegram.

Suppressing during focus

There’s no built-in “do not disturb” toggle yet. Workarounds:

• Set ht notify --silent (planned) to skip the banner but keep the sidebar entry.
• Use ht log instead of ht notify for non-critical updates.
• Disable Telegram forwarding in settings while pairing or screen-sharing.

Read more

• ht notify
• ht log / ht set-status / ht set-progress
• Telegram bridge