Plain Changelog

We pull the official changelog, sanitize it, and organize it into a uniform list. Follow each entry URL to read the original on the vendor site.

1. Oct 24, 2024
   Ari - Agentic Search & Smarter Handoffs Ari should be your default first responder, and has been rebuilt from a rigid "classify and handoff" workflow into an agentic search first approach. Rather than running a single fixed pipeline to answer your customer's questions, Ari now iterates: it first searches your knowledge sources, evaluates what came back, refines the query if needed, then drafts an answer. A judge can reject the answer, meaning Ari retries with feedback rather than immediately handing off, helping your customers get answers more often without escalating to a human. Alongside this, a number of other improvements were shipped: - Ari's question classification is stronger, meaning more of the right type of questions flow through to search and answer rather than being routed to handoff - The judge can now trigger retries with feedback when it rejects an answer, so a borderline response can be improved rather than discarded - Every tool inside Ari now reads from a single consistent view of the thread, fixing edge cases where Ari only saw partial context Designed, built, and written by Charlie Revett Engineering May 25, 2026 Ari - Agentic Search & Smarter Handoffs

   almost 2 years ago
2. Pause threads indefinitely You can now pause a thread without setting a wake-up time. The existing pause behavior stays exactly the same — a customer reply brings the thread back, a linked Linear issue moving to Done fires Close the Loop. The only thing that changes is you no longer have to pick a date when you don't have one. Choosing "indefinitely" tells Plain: park this until something actually happens, not until an arbitrary timer fires. This is the right move for threads that are blocked on engineering, waiting on a third-party vendor, or on hold for a reason that has no natural deadline. Instead of re-snoozing every few days to keep the thread off your queue, you pause once and let the trigger do the work. Designed, built, and written by Jordan Drake Engineering Jun 25, 2026 Pause threads indefinitely

   almost 2 years ago
3. Machine users can now link Linear issues API keys can now call createThreadLink — so your automations can attach a Linear issue to a Plain thread, not just create one. Before this, createThreadLink was human-only. That meant any workflow that automatically filed a bug in Linear hit a wall: the issue existed, the thread existed, but connecting them required a human to go into the UI and link them manually. The automation was half-finished by design. Now the full loop works without intervention. Your backend creates the Linear issue, links it to the thread, and from that point Plain takes over — Close the Loop fires when the issue is resolved, the thread surfaces at the right moment, and nothing gets lost between your bug tracker and your support queue. Designed, built, and written by Jordan Drake Engineering Jun 24, 2026 Machine users can now link Linear issues

   almost 2 years ago
4. Sidekick is now in Slack Sidekick is now available directly in Slack. @mention Plain in any connected channel and it responds in the thread — with full access to your knowledge sources, tool integrations, and support history. Sidekick in Slack has access to the same tool catalog as Sidekick in Plain: Plain built-ins (always on): threads, customers, tenants, help center search and reading Connectable integrations : Slack, Datadog, Linear, Notion, Incident.io, and others. Whatever the workspace has connected in Sidekick Settings → Integrations is available A few things worth knowing: Everyone can use it, not just users with Plain accounts — a Plain account isn't required, as long as their email matches your workspace domain. Slack-specific instructions — set a separate behavior prompt for how Sidekick responds in Slack, independent of its in-app instructions, under Plain AI → Sidekick. Team-internal only — Sidekick responds to Plain users in internal channels. Slack Connect channels and DMs are not supported. To enable it, go to Settings → AI → Sidekick → Integrations → Slack and click Add to Slack . Once connected, Plain automatically creates an #ask-plain channel where your team can start immediately. To add Sidekick to other channels, select them from the connected-channels list on the same page. Designed, built, and written by Preslav Mihaylov Engineering Dimitra Zuccarelli Engineering Jun 18, 2026 Sidekick is now in Slack

   almost 2 years ago
5. Weekly Digest June 19 Sidekick improvements: Share links for discussions — you can now copy a direct link to any Sidekick discussion. Resizable panel — the Sidekick panel can now be resized by dragging the edge. Message timestamps — timestamps now show on messages in the Sidekick panel. Sort discussions by last updated — Sidekick discussions can now be sorted by last updated, not just by creation date. Other improvements: Machine users render in thread timeline — API bots (machine users) now appear correctly in thread timeline text components GraphQL schema descriptions — customer-facing descriptions have been added across the GraphQL API schema, making fields easier to discover in explorers and generated docs. Designed, built, and written by Preslav Mihaylov Engineering Jacob Cutts Engineering Jesús Hernández Engineering Elise Hein Engineering Jun 19, 2026 Weekly Digest June 19

   almost 2 years ago
6. Weekly Digest June 4 Bugs Fixed: Prevent duplicates in assignee selection trigger More accurate investigating status copy Fix My threads sub items not getting active link highlighting Fix invisible code block background in reply composer in dark mode Correctly render attachments when editing notes (prevents attachments becoming base64 text after edit) Autoclose most panels when Sidekick opens Fix Linear link tag tooltip styling Correctly reference message sender as sender in new reply notification email Clear all assignees when >1 assignee if “Clear assignees on Done/Snoozed” setting is enabled Prevent updating thread customer from dropping attachments on custom entries Ari Improvements: Fixed issues around how Ari signs off as part of a response Added a new pre-generation step to Ari's core to ensure that it provides novel solutions only Also added a new post-generation step to mark Ari's homework to ensure any solution provided is novel Designed, built, and written by Elise Hein Engineering Charlie Revett Engineering Jun 4, 2026 Weekly Digest June 4

   almost 2 years ago
7. Send Slack notifications with workflows You can now send a Slack message as a workflow action. Add the Send Slack notification step to any workflow and choose a channel from the Slack integrations already connected to your workspace. Write the message body using {{ }} variable interpolation — thread subject, customer name, tenant fields, and other workflow variables are all available. The notification posts as a standalone message in the channel when the workflow runs. It is not tied to a specific thread. Designed, built, and written by Rosie Ollerenshaw Engineering Jun 10, 2026 Send Slack notifications with workflows

   almost 2 years ago
8. Sidekick Home Sidekick now has a home of its own: the first item in your sidebar, a full page where you start a session about anything in your workspace, see every session it's running, and manage the tools it can reach. Start with a question, not a thread. Open Sidekick and ask it anything about your support operation. "What needs my attention right now?" surfaces SLA breaches and the threads that have waited longest. "Find out what's behind the latest error reports" traces them to the related issue and the deploy behind it. Every session in one place. A session can start from a thread, Cmd+K, Slack, or a workflow. They all land in the same sidebar with live status, so the investigations you didn't start yourself are no longer out of sight. Connect what you use. Plain is always connected. Every other integration, from CRMs to issue trackers to observability, is managed from the same page. The more you connect, the more Sidekick can cross-reference. If Plain AI is enabled on your workspace, Sidekick is at the top of your sidebar. Designed, built, and written by Preslav Mihaylov Engineering Dimitra Zuccarelli Engineering Jacob Cutts Engineering Jul 12, 2026 Sidekick Home

   almost 2 years ago
9. Thread fields via Chat You can now pass thread fields through the chat widget — so context about who's chatting arrives with the conversation, not after it. Pass any thread field value in your widget initialization and it will be set on the thread automatically when a customer starts a chat. Your team opens the thread and the relevant context is already there: which product they're on, what plan they're using, which page they were on, whatever your team needs to triage and respond well. This closes a gap that existed between Plain's API and the chat widget. Thread fields were already first-class in Plain — you could set them programmatically on email or API threads — but chat-initiated threads had no equivalent. Now the widget is consistent with the rest of the platform. Designed, built, and written by Jordan Drake Engineering Jul 1, 2026 Thread fields via Chat

   almost 2 years ago
10. Weekly Digest July 3 "Create customer" always available in search — the option now shows even when your search returns matches, not just when it's empty. Filter threads by text thread fields — text-type thread fields can now be used as filters when searching threads. Table support in Linear issue templates — tables now render correctly instead of collapsing into a flat list. Clearer heading hierarchy in the Linear issue editor — heading levels now show distinct weight, not just size. Notes can be image-only — submit an internal note that's just an attachment, no text required. Assign-to-user improvements — a toggle to include offline/away users when assigning, plus the option to assign via a user-ref tenant field. Fix: composer overflowing on small screens — the composer's height calc used physical screen pixels instead of the visible viewport, overflowing on phones like iPhone SE. Fix: image backgrounds incorrectly switching between light/dark mode — some embed images were toggling background color with the theme when they should stay fixed. Designed, built, and written by David Leyland Engineering Jacob Cutts Engineering Jul 3, 2026 Weekly Digest July 3

    almost 2 years ago
11. Workflow link sharing You can now generate a shareable link from any published workflow. Open the overflow menu in the workflow editor, hit "Copy share link", and send the URL. When someone opens it, the workflow lands in their editor as a draft they can review, adjust, and publish. The link carries the trigger, all steps, conditions, and any Sidekick prompt. If workspace-specific settings like labels, assignees, or queues don't exist in the destination, those fields are left blank rather than blocking the import. The same workflow always produces the same link, so sharing it multiple times doesn't create duplicates. Designed, built, and written by Jacob Cutts Engineering Jul 22, 2026 Workflow link sharing

    almost 2 years ago
12. Bring your ticket history with you You can now import past conversations into Plain from any tool, including known providers and in-house systems, without a built-in importer. Imported threads keep their original creation dates and message authors, along with customer emails, agent replies, internal notes, and attachments. Each thread also records when it was imported and who imported it. Re-running an import skips anything already brought across, so a migration that stops halfway can be started again without creating duplicates. Imported threads don't trigger SLAs or autoresponders. Examples and instructions on how to get set up are in the API docs . If you're switching from Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, or Help Scout, use the built-in importers instead. Designed, built, and written by Ethel Ng Engineering Aug 4, 2026 Bring your ticket history with you

    almost 2 years ago
13. Run workflows on a schedule You can now run a workflow on a recurring schedule, without needing a thread to set it off. Until now every workflow started from something happening on a thread: a new message, a status change, or a manual trigger. Scheduled workflows run on their own timetable instead, so you can automate routine work that is not tied to any single conversation. Add a Scheduled trigger and pick how often it runs: hourly, daily, on weekdays, or weekly, at the time you choose. Plain shows a plain-English summary like "Runs daily at 09:00" so you can see exactly when it will fire, and the schedule follows your timezone. Because there is no thread behind the run, scheduled workflows use actions that stand on their own: Send a Slack notification to post a recurring update or digest to a channel Send an HTTP request to sync with or kick off work in an external system Create an internal notification for a routine reminder to your team Start a Sidekick discussion to have Sidekick take on a recurring task, like reviewing overnight threads each morning Every run shows up in the workflow's run history. If a run starts a Sidekick discussion, you get an Open discussion button to jump straight to it. Designed, built, and written by Dimitra Zuccarelli Engineering Jul 7, 2026 Run workflows on a schedule

    almost 2 years ago
14. Sidekick Actions Sidekick can now take actions on your behalf across connected tools and inside Plain. Write tools give Sidekick the ability to take actions across connected integrations: creating Linear issues, updating Notion pages, acting on threads in Plain. Whatever tools are connected in your workspace are now available for actions, not just lookups. Approvals give you control over when those actions run. Before Sidekick makes a change, it pauses and shows you exactly what it's about to do. Approve or deny directly in Plain or from the Slack message. To review what tools are connected, go to Settings → AI → Sidekick → Integrations . Learn more in www.plain.com/sidekick Designed, built, and written by Preslav Mihaylov Engineering Jacob Cutts Engineering Jun 30, 2026 Sidekick Actions

    almost 2 years ago
15. Improvements to Ari's judgement Six improvements to Ari's judgment, shipped: Hands off when a human is tagged. If a customer tags a teammate in a Slack thread, Ari steps back, hands off, and leaves a note explaining why. No replies on outbound threads. Threads your team starts are no longer picked up by Ari. It hands off and leaves a note so nothing falls through the cracks. Bot detection. Ari can now tell when it's talking to an autoresponder or another bot, and breaks the loop instead of replying forever. Knows when a message isn't for it. Well-wishes, FYIs, and links that don't need a support response are now handed off rather than answered. No offering to take actions it can't take. Ari no longer promises to do things on the customer's behalf or says "someone will handle this" without a real handoff happening. Better chit-chat detection. Off-topic messages like life advice or recipes are now redirected to support questions, rather than receiving a full support reply. Designed, built, and written by Emanuel Danci Software Engineer Jun 17, 2026 Improvements to Ari's judgement

    almost 2 years ago
16. Weekly Digest June 12 Workflow improvements Four workflow updates shipped together. You can now trigger workflows manually and see live execution progress in the thread dock, including who kicked it off. New CSAT triggers let you fire workflows when a survey is sent or when a customer completes one and a new CSAT sentiment condition lets you branch on whether the response was positive, neutral, or negative. We've also added support for "message contains" conditions now support whole-word matching, fixing false positives where partial keyword matches (e.g. "plan" inside "planning") were triggering workflows unintentionally. Email signature character limit increased The character limit on user email signatures has been raised. Agents with longer signatures or formatted content will no longer find their signatures cut off. Help center: section title element A new section title block is available in the help center article editor. Use it to break longer articles into clearly labelled sections. Designed, built, and written by Jordan Drake Engineering Charlie Revett Engineering Rosie Ollerenshaw Engineering Nico Domino Engineering Jun 12, 2026 Weekly Digest June 12

    almost 2 years ago
17. Sidekick in Workflows When a thread matches your workflow's conditions, Sidekick starts working on it immediately, so the investigation, summary, or draft reply is already waiting when your team opens the thread. Add the Start Sidekick discussion action to any workflow and write the first message Sidekick should receive. For example: "Investigate this thread. Check Sentry for matching errors, search Linear for related issues, and post your findings as a note." The message reaches Sidekick exactly as you write it, and Sidekick reads the thread itself. This step always ends the workflow. When it fires, Plain opens a discussion on the thread, visible to your whole workspace with Workflow as the sender. These are full Sidekick sessions: they can read from every integration your workspace has connected, take actions governed by your approval policies, and anyone on the team can jump in and continue the conversation. Workflows can also run on a schedule. Set a trigger to fire hourly, daily, on weekdays, or weekly, with no thread involved. Recurring work runs itself: a morning digest of overnight threads posted to Slack, a weekly report on support themes, a daily sweep for threads that have gone quiet. The action appears in the workflow builder once Plain AI is enabled on your workspace. Sessions use Sidekick credits like any other session. Designed, built, and written by Preslav Mihaylov Engineering Jul 6, 2026 Sidekick in Workflows

    almost 2 years ago
18. Custom Skills Teach Sidekick the routines your team runs over and over. Write a skill once and everyone in your workspace can use it. Ask Sidekick to build it. Go to Sidekick → Skills, hit "Add custom skill", and choose "Build with Sidekick". Describe what you want, work it out together in chat, and Sidekick saves the finished skill to your workspace. You can also write one yourself in the same place, and edit, disable, or delete any skill later. Tell Sidekick when to use it. A skill is a name, the instructions Sidekick follows, and a line describing when the skill applies. That last part means Sidekick can reach for the right skill on its own, so your team doesn't have to remember which ones exist. Two skills built in. Every workspace starts with Draft reply, which turns your investigation into a ready-to-send customer reply in your workspace tone, and Plain docs, which answers questions about how Plain itself works. Run one by asking. Ask for a skill by name in a Sidekick session, or let Sidekick reach for it on its own. Skills are available wherever Sidekick is: on a thread, on the Sidekick page, in a connected Slack channel, and in a workflow. Designed, built, and written by Jacob Cutts Engineering Jul 27, 2026 Custom Skills

    almost 2 years ago
19. Check out the new Ari This new Ari release allows you to test Ari before it talks to your customers, see the proof behind every answer, shape how it talks and when it escalates, and trust it to know when to leave a thread to a human. Try it before your customers do. Ari now has a Playground: a private chat where you can ask questions and see the exact reasoning behind every answer, no real customers involved. When you're ready, run Shadow Mode on your live threads. Ari drafts replies to real customers, but nothing sends, only your team sees it. Once you trust Ari, you can enable it to resolve real customer threads. See where every answer came from.  Every reply records the knowledge sources behind it, in the thread, through the API, and via the Plain MCP. You can audit any answer long after it is sent, and Ari links customers to the full help center article inline. Shape Ari around your team.  Custom instructions is a free-text box in Ari preferences: write your introductions, escalation rules, product vocabulary, and sign-offs without engineering work. Thread labels and the thread fields you pick now feed Ari too. Together, Ari sounds like your team, escalates on your rules, and already knows which product and plan a request is about. Ari can respond to more of your customers, and uses judgement to know when not to. Ari’s search weighs exact wording alongside meaning, and it reads the files your customers attach. Error codes and API names retrieve correctly, and a screenshot or log file is enough to answer from. The tickets that arrive as an image get answered on first touch. Ari also checks the thread first: if a teammate's already replying, it hands off instead of jumping in, and it won't offer to do something it can't actually do. Learn more → Designed, built, and written by Charlie Revett Engineering Emanuel Danci Software Engineer Aug 18, 2026 Check out the new Ari

    almost 2 years ago
20. Connect Sidekick to custom MCPs Sidekick can now connect to any MCP server, not just Plain's built-in integrations. If your team runs internal tools, an identity provider, a data platform, or anything else with an MCP server, connect it and Sidekick can use it directly while helping resolve a ticket, instead of you switching tabs to check. Under the hood, Sidekick talks to your server over Streamable HTTP MCP. When you connect a server, Plain discovers its available tools and shows you all of them. You decide which ones Sidekick can actually call, and can review or revoke access to any individual tool at any time. Connections authenticate with OAuth or an API key, credentials are never exposed to the rest of your workspace, and each workspace can connect up to 10 servers. To get started, go to Sidekick → Integrations → Custom MCP in your Plain workspace. Designed, built, and written by Preslav Mihaylov Engineering Jul 29, 2026 Connect Sidekick to custom MCPs

    almost 2 years ago

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