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Quick Start Tutorial

Get hands-on with Notify-MCP in 10 minutes! This tutorial walks you through creating channels, publishing notifications, and retrieving them across AI platforms.

Prerequisites

Before starting:

Step 1: Create Your First Channel

Channels organize notifications by topic, team, or project. Let's create an engineering channel:

In Claude:

Create a channel called 'engineering' for technical updates and decisions

Claude will use the create_channel tool:

{
  "channel_id": "engineering",
  "name": "Engineering Team",
  "description": "Technical updates and decisions"
}

Result: Channel created! ✅

Step 2: Subscribe to the Channel

Subscribe to receive notifications from the channel. You can add filters for priority, tags, or themes:

In Claude:

Subscribe me to the engineering channel with high and critical priority only

Claude will use the subscribe_to_channel tool:

{
  "channel": "engineering",
  "priority_filter": ["high", "critical"]
}

Result: Subscribed with filters! 🔔

Step 3: Publish a Notification

Let's publish an architecture decision to the engineering channel:

In Claude:

Publish to engineering channel: We've decided to migrate to PostgreSQL for better
performance. This is a high-priority architecture decision tagged with database and backend.

Claude will use the publish_notification tool:

{
  "channel": "engineering",
  "title": "Architecture Decision: Migrate to PostgreSQL",
  "body": "We've decided to migrate to PostgreSQL for better performance and scalability.",
  "priority": "high",
  "theme": "architecture-decision",
  "tags": ["database", "backend", "migration"]
}

Result: Notification published! 📢

Step 4: Retrieve Notifications

Now let's retrieve notifications from the channel:

In Claude:

Show me recent notifications from the engineering channel

Claude will read the notification://engineering/recent resource:

Result: You'll see your published notification! 📬

Step 5: Test Cross-Platform (Optional)

If you have ChatGPT or Gemini configured with Notify-MCP:

In ChatGPT or Gemini:

Show me recent notifications from the engineering channel

Result: You'll see the same notification published from Claude! 🌐

This demonstrates cross-platform collaboration!

Common Usage Patterns

Pattern 1: Architecture Decisions

Publish an architecture decision to engineering:
Title: "Migration to Microservices"
Context: Current monolith is hard to scale
Decision: Moving to microservices with Docker and Kubernetes
Priority: High
Tags: architecture, microservices, infrastructure

Pattern 2: Critical Alerts

Publish a critical alert to production channel:
Title: "Database Connection Pool Exhausted"
Status: 250/250 connections in use
Impact: API response times degraded
Priority: Critical

Pattern 3: Status Updates

Publish to project-alpha channel:
Title: "Sprint 5 Complete - Beta Release Ready"
Achievements: All 23 stories completed, 87% test coverage
Next Steps: Deploy beta tomorrow at 10 AM
Priority: Medium

Using Slash Commands (Claude Code)

For faster workflows, use slash commands:

Create Architecture Decision

/notify-decision

Claude will prompt you for: - Decision title - Context/background - What was decided - Consequences

Create Critical Alert

/notify-alert

Claude will prompt you for alert details.

View Recent Notifications

/notify-recent

Select which channel to view.

Advanced: Filtering

Subscribe with specific filters to receive only relevant notifications:

Priority Filtering

Subscribe to production channel with critical priority only

Only critical alerts will reach you.

Tag Filtering

Subscribe to engineering channel with tags: security, database

Only notifications tagged with security or database will be visible.

Combined Filtering

Subscribe to project-alpha with high priority and tags: frontend, ui

Only high-priority frontend/UI notifications will match.

What's Next?

Now that you've mastered the basics:

Need Help?

Congratulations! You've completed the Quick Start tutorial. 🎉

Ready to see real-world scenarios? Explore Use Cases →