Give Polo work

Everything Polo does is a task: one piece of work, written the way you would ask a colleague. A task can come from the app, from a chat or ticket tool, from an alert, from an uptime monitor or from a schedule. However it arrives, it runs the same way: an agent plans the work, reads what it needs, proposes any change as an exact operation, and waits for approval before anything outside its own working copy changes.

Where work comes from

Source	How it starts a task	Where you set it up
Task board	You write the request in the app	Home or Assign task
Slack	A mention of Polo in a chosen channel, or a direct message	Apps → Slack
Google Chat	A mention or a direct message in an approved space	Apps → Alerts and chat intake (Intake)
Gmail	An email sent to your private assignment address	Apps → Gmail, Email assignments
Jira	An issue assigned to Polo’s Jira service account	Apps → Jira
ClickUp	A task in a List assigned to Polo	Apps → ClickUp
Grafana alerts	A signed alert notification from a contact point	Apps → Alerts and chat intake
Uptime monitors	A monitored URL fails its checks	Incidents → Uptime
Schedules	A recurring task comes due	Automation

You can also give work from an MCP client or the plungo command line with an access token; see Team and security.

Assign a task in the app

1. Open Home and write the request under Ask Polo, or press Assign task at the top of any page. The buttons Infrastructure, Improve a pipeline and Investigate an incident fill in an example.
2. Optional: open Repository, environment, and budget and set the Repository (a registered protected branch), the Service and Environment, and a Model budget (USD) for this task. Leave the budget empty to use the agent’s own.
3. Choose the Agent. With Polo decides, Polo, the supervisor, reads the request and gives each part to the right agent. Name an agent when one should take the whole task.
4. Choose Task permissions: Use the agent’s permissions, Read only, or Choose exact permissions to tick the tools this one task may use.
5. Press Assign to Polo.

An agent needs an active AI model before it can take a task; see AI models and spend. Viewers cannot assign work.

Chat, tickets and email

Each outside source is connected once by an administrator. For every source you choose the agent that takes the work, the environment and service, an optional repository, a model budget per incoming task and the tools incoming work may use.

• Slack. Press Connect Slack workspace to install Polo’s Slack app, then choose routes: mentions in selected channels, direct-message conversations, and alert bots whose messages Polo should investigate. If the shared app is not available in your deployment, use Set up custom Slack app with a Slack app your team manages.
• Google Chat. Uses the Chat app your team manages in Google Cloud. You list the spaces where mentions and direct messages are accepted.
• Jira. Connect Jira takes the site, project key, the service account that will receive issues, a scoped API token and a webhook signing secret. Assigning an issue to that account starts a task.
• ClickUp. Connect ClickUp takes your ClickUp OAuth app, the workspace and List, and Polo’s assignee ID. Assigning a task in that List to Polo starts a task.
• Gmail. On the Gmail page, Email assignments maps a sender (an administrator or operator) to a private assignment address. Send a new plain-text email to it, with the task title as the subject and the instructions in the body. Whoever runs your Polo must have the Gmail background scanner enabled.

Note

In Slack and Google Chat, each person must be linked to their Polo workspace account. Only mapped members can open tasks through mentions or direct messages.

A new source reads Registered · no delivery yet until the provider delivers its first signed event. Delivery history on the Intake page lists each incoming event and the task it opened.

For Slack and Google Chat sources you can turn on Task follow-through: Polo sends progress and the outcome to the original thread, tells the requester when it has a question, and can accept the requester’s answer in the same thread.

Alerts, monitors and schedules

• Grafana alerts. Add a Webhook integration to a Grafana contact point with the URL and signing secret Polo shows when you create the source, and list the alert rules you allow. A firing alert opens an incident and an investigation task. See Incidents and uptime and the guide Send a Grafana alert to Polo.
• Uptime monitors. A monitor that fails opens an incident and, if you chose it, an agent’s investigation.
• Schedules. A recurring task creates a normal task each time it runs. See Automation.

Tasks started by an alert or a monitor investigate with read-only tools. A fix is proposed separately and waits for approval.

Questions Polo asks

When a request is unclear, Polo pauses the task and asks. Open questions appear in three places: Needs you on Home, Questions on Approvals, and Questions from Polo in the task itself.

1. Open the question.
2. Pick one of the suggested answers or write your own under Answer for Polo.
3. Submit it. The task continues.

An operator or administrator can answer. An answer only gives context: it cannot change what the agent may do and it does not approve a change.

Follow a task to its result

Tasks lists everything you asked for, with the tabs All, Running, Waiting for you, Done and Failed, a search box and a filter by agent. Failed rows give the reason in plain words.

Status	Meaning
Queued	Polo starts when a worker is free
Running	Polo is working on it
Waiting for you	A question you can answer, or a change you may decide
Waiting for an answer	A question only an operator or administrator can answer
Waiting for approval	A change that someone else must decide
Done	Polo reported the task complete
Failed	Polo could not finish; the row says why
Canceled	Someone canceled it before Polo finished

Open a task to see:

• one sentence on what happened and the next action;
• a progress strip: Received, Investigating, and for a task with changes, Change proposed, Approved, Applied and Verified, then Done;
• the changes Polo proposed, which you approve or reject inline when you may;
• what Polo found, the reports it published, and any points it could not confirm;
• the activity in plain words, and the agents that helped;
• Technical details with identifiers and per-model usage.

From a task you can press Assign follow-up to continue from its result, or Cancel task to stop it and its helpers.