ntfy Notifications for AI Agent Approvals

Description and use

Get instant phone alerts for AI agent actions awaiting approval using ntfy instead of Slack, with digest batching and secure topic naming.

Problem

Receive phone notifications for AI agent actions awaiting approval without using Slack or third‑party push services.

Outcome

Instant, lightweight phone alerts for AI agent approvals, avoiding Slack and third‑party SaaS, with digest batching to reduce noise.

Workflow

• 1. Create an ntfy channel in Impri using an admin‑scope API key, specifying ntfy URL and a hard‑to‑guess topic.
• 2. Subscribe to the topic on the ntfy mobile app (no account needed).
• 3. In the agent code, push each draft to Impri via the /v1/actions endpoint with the desired preview and expiry.
• 4. Impri delivers the action to the ntfy channel; ntfy batches actions within the digest window and sends a single notification to the phone.
• 5. On the phone, tap the notification to open the Impri inbox link and approve, reject, or edit the draft.

Evidence

Pick a topic name that's hard to guess — ntfy topics are unauthenticated by default, so anything predictable like my‑approvals can be subscribed to by a stranger.

Source

A channel that fails delivery five times running is auto‑disabled — worth knowing if your homelab server reboots and ntfy is briefly unreachable; check Settings → Notifications after an outage rather than assuming silence means nothing happened.

Source