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Auto-triage is a special type of automation where a persistent Devin monitors a Slack channel and automatically investigates bugs, regressions, and incidents as they come in. Instead of manually assigning someone to look at every report, Devin watches the channel 24/7, decides what needs attention, and spawns focused sub-sessions to diagnose each issue. Auto-triage has long-term memory — it accumulates context over time and learns from you via its scratchpad. It intelligently deduplicates repeated reports and automatically routes issues to the right code owner.

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How it works

A long-running parent Devin monitors your Slack channel and listens to every new message. It filters out noise, detects duplicates, and spawns focused child sub-devins to investigate actionable bugs. Each child reads the relevant code, traces the root cause, posts a diagnosis in the Slack thread, and tags the right code owner.

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Setting up auto-triage

  1. Invite Devin to the Slack channel you want monitored (e.g. #bugs, #incidents)
  2. Go to Automations and create a new automation using the Triage bug reports on Slack template
  3. Select the channel and save
That’s it — Devin will start watching the channel and triaging incoming messages.
Your personal Slack account must be connected in Settings > Integrations > Slack.

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Customizing behavior

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Setup prompt

The setup prompt lets you customize how the triage Devin behaves. This is injected into the agent’s instructions and influences how it handles incoming messages. Examples:
  • “Focus on regressions in the payments service. For frontend bugs, tag the UI team.”
  • “Only investigate issues that include error logs or stack traces. Ask for more details if the report is vague.”
  • “When you find a root cause, always include a link to the relevant source file.”

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MCP integrations

Connecting MCP integrations is highly recommended — they dramatically improve triage quality by giving Devin access to runtime data like logs, metrics, and error details.
Connect MCP integrations to give the triage Devin access to external tools. For example:
  • Datadog MCP — Pull metrics, logs, and traces to correlate issues with runtime behavior
  • Sentry MCP — Look up error details, stack traces, and affected users
  • Linear MCP — Check for related tickets or create new ones
Enable MCP servers in Settings > MCP Marketplace before setting up the automation.

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The scratchpad

The parent monitor and all child sub-devins share a persistent scratchpad. This is used to:
  • Track recently triaged items (channel ID, message timestamp, reporter)
  • Maintain a routing table mapping code areas to owners
  • Record duplicate items so future reports can be linked to existing threads
  • Store context that persists across session restarts
The scratchpad is the automation’s long-term memory. The parent is primarily responsible for maintaining it, but children can read it for context and update it when they discover new information (e.g. someone says “that’s not my area”).

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Security

Since incoming Slack messages can contain untrusted user input (e.g. from support tickets), consider enabling a network policy to restrict outbound access for your auto-triage automation.

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Limits

Like all automations, auto-triage supports ACU limits and invocation limits to control resource usage. Each child sub-devin spawned by the parent counts as a session against your ACU budget.

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Tips for effective auto-triage

  • Start with a focused channel. Pick a channel dedicated to bug reports rather than a general engineering channel. Less noise means better signal.
  • Set clear expectations in the setup prompt. Tell Devin what kinds of issues to prioritize and what to ignore.
  • Connect relevant MCP integrations. Datadog, Sentry, and other observability tools dramatically improve triage quality by giving Devin access to runtime data.
  • Correct routing mistakes. When Devin tags the wrong person, reply in the thread with a correction. The parent updates its routing table and gets it right next time.