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Flowfield’s notification system collects task-attention alerts, operation errors, and available update notices in one place. Notifications persist across browsers and restarts — everyone viewing the board sees the same notification state.

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What triggers a notification

Flowfield creates a notification whenever one of the following conditions is true:
  • A task needs your attention — a question is waiting, a result is ready for review, or a worker needs intervention.
  • An operation error occurred that requires your awareness.
  • A newer version of Flowfield is available on PyPI.

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Persistence

Notifications are saved in the workspace database, not per-browser. Dismissals are shared across all browsers and survive service restarts. Flowfield retains the 200 most recent notification records; older records are pruned automatically as new ones arrive.

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Dismissal

Dismissing a notification clears the alert only. It does not answer a question, approve code, or change the worker queue. Clear Notifications dismisses the currently visible set; any newer notices that arrived after the last page load remain visible.

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Desktop alerts

Desktop alerts are optional and are configured per browser. To enable them, click Enable Browser Notifications in the Notifications panel and allow the permission when your browser asks. Once enabled, Flowfield delivers desktop popups for new notifications. Keep in mind:
  • Permission is granted per browser — enabling it on one machine does not affect others.
  • Delivery is best effort: Flowfield makes one attempt, shared across tabs and browsers.
  • An open browser tab with the Flowfield UI is required for desktop alerts to appear.

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Update notifications

Flowfield checks PyPI for newer releases automatically and surfaces the result as a notification. The check runs:
  • When the web app opens in a browser
  • Hourly while the service is running
  • On demand when you click Check for Updates in the Notifications panel, or run flowfield update check from the CLI
All checks share a single saved result across browsers and the CLI — there is no per-browser update state. Stable installs see notices for stable releases only. Prerelease installs can also discover prerelease versions. Releases must be compatible with your Python version and have a matching distribution. When an update is available, the notification links to the release notes and includes upgrade commands for both uv and pip. Flowfield never installs updates automatically. You are always in control of when an upgrade happens. To turn off automatic background checks, use the toggle in Notifications settings or start the service with FLOWFIELD_UPDATE_CHECKS=0:
Manual checks remain available even when automatic checks are disabled. No project content or usage data is included in the request to PyPI — only a version check.

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CLI update commands

You can interact with the update system from the command line without opening a browser.
update status reads the service’s shared result, or the last cached result when the service is stopped. update check asks the running service to perform a check immediately and waits briefly for the result. Both commands accept --json; human-readable notices and errors go to stderr.