Nanobot proposes native Linear delegation with honest connection and Stop states

Nanobot's September 22 Linear proposal moves beyond receiving mentions toward a native agent workflow that also accepts delegated issues. PR #5871 adds authorized-workspace health and scope visibility, pairing guidance, revocation handling and a direct path to set up Linear tools. Buttons, attachments, reasoning and tool progress are mapped into Linear Agent Activities rather than flattened into ordinary chat text.

The source makes connection status deliberately less triumphant. An OAuth callback says authorization was received, not that Linear is connected; a cancelled authorization does not render a success message. Tests distinguish a stored installation with missing scopes from one with the required authorization. If remote revocation fails, local connection state is retained rather than pretending the account has safely disconnected.

The same boundary appears in cancellation. Linear's Stop signal becomes the existing priority /stop command without requiring pairing or emitting a misleading starting activity. The author explicitly does not promise an absolute barrier against all later activity: that would require changes in the core agent loop, outside this channel proposal. The useful advance is a clearer integration contract, not a claim that every execution and delivery edge has been solved.

The facts

- PR #5871 was open when inspected and covers both Linear mentions and delegated issues. - The proposed authorization scope set includes app:assignable as well as app:mentionable. - Native activities carry buttons, attachments, reasoning and tool progress, with attachment budgets and credential redaction. - The callback tests reject the claim that receiving OAuth authorization alone means the channel is connected. - The author reports 45 channel tests, 20 focused WebUI and locale tests, and a real local gateway/browser smoke check. - A real Linear workspace is still needed for end-to-end OAuth, delegation, activity, attachment and Stop validation.

Why it matters

Issue trackers are not just alternative chat windows. Assignment, authorization, progress and cancellation all have native meanings, and a connector must translate them without inventing stronger guarantees. Clear connection and revocation states help operators tell the difference between granting access, installing a channel and having a runtime that can actually accept work.

Current

Checked September 23, 2026. The inspected release baseline is v0.3.5. The primary source is open proposal. Tagged release availability and development-source state are separate: a release baseline does not establish that a proposed setting or newly merged feature is in an installed package.

Evidence

Primary: HKUDS/nanobot PR #5871 (https://github.com/HKUDS/nanobot/pull/5871). Context and implementation: HKUDS/nanobot — linear-agent.md (source) (https://github.com/HKUDS/nanobot/blob/6a4ac325eeba145046161a6e01bb86a01f35fc59/docs/guides/linear-agent.md); HKUDS/nanobot — test_linear.py (source) (https://github.com/HKUDS/nanobot/blob/6a4ac325eeba145046161a6e01bb86a01f35fc59/nanobot/channels/linear/tests/test_linear.py). The linked source text was inspected; reported experiments and test results remain attributed to their authors.

Operator take

Evaluate the proposal with separate checks for authorization, runtime health, assignment intake, activity rendering and cancellation. Inspect the permissions of the authorized workspace and whether private attachments are withheld before pairing. Test failed revocation as well as successful disconnect. For Stop, observe both model execution and subsequent activity delivery; routing a priority command correctly is only one layer of the user-visible cancellation contract.

Caveat

No live Linear workspace was exercised by this curation run, and the contributor explicitly leaves that qualification outstanding. The proposal reports one unrelated Windows-local UI timeout alongside its focused passes. Stop uses existing core behavior and is not a promise that no subsequent activity can appear.