The Developer Support Stack

If your team uses Slack for communication and Linear for project management, you already have the pieces for an effective support system. You just need a classification layer that connects them.

Here is the architecture:

Customer message comes in. It gets classified by intent. Based on the intent, actions fire:

• Bug reports create Linear issues and notify the #engineering Slack channel
• Feature requests create Linear tasks in your "Requests" project
• Billing questions notify #support in Slack
• Simple questions (pricing, password resets) get auto-replied without involving Slack or Linear at all

Your team never leaves the tools they already use.

Setting Up the Slack Integration

Step 1: Connect Slack via OAuth. One click, authorize the app, pick a default channel. Done.

Step 2: Create channel-specific routes:

• #support-general: Default channel for anything that needs human attention
• #support-billing: Billing-related intents (refund_request, billing_dispute, payment_failure)
• #support-engineering: Technical intents (bug_report, technical_issue, api_error)
• #support-critical: Any message with critical priority, regardless of intent

Step 3: Configure message format. Slack notifications should include:

• The customer's message
• The classified intent and confidence score
• A link to the conversation in your dashboard
• Quick-action buttons (resolve, escalate, view)

Setting Up the Linear Integration

Step 1: Connect Linear via OAuth.

Step 2: Map intents to Linear projects or labels:

• bug_report creates an issue in your "Bugs" project with priority mapped from the support priority
• feature_request creates an issue in your "Feature Requests" project
• technical_issue creates an issue in your "Support" project
• api_error creates an issue in your "Bugs" project with an "API" label

Step 3: Set issue templates. Each auto-created Linear issue should include:

• Title: Brief summary of the customer's message
• Description: Full customer message + classification details
• Priority: Mapped from support priority (critical = urgent, high = high, etc.)
• Labels: Intent category and source channel

The Complete Flow

A customer reports a bug:

1. Message arrives: "The export feature crashes when I try to download more than 100 rows"
2. Classified as bug_report with 93% confidence, high priority
3. Auto-reply sent: "Thanks for reporting this. We have logged it and our engineering team is looking into it."
4. Linear issue created in "Bugs" project with high priority
5. Slack notification posted to #support-engineering with the bug details and Linear link
6. Engineer sees it in Slack, clicks the Linear link, investigates, fixes, and resolves the Linear issue
7. Support conversation automatically updated when the Linear issue is resolved

A customer asks about pricing:

1. Message arrives: "How much does the pro plan cost?"
2. Classified as pricing_inquiry with 96% confidence
3. Auto-reply sent with pricing details and link to pricing page
4. No Slack notification, no Linear issue. Fully automated.

Tips for This Stack

Keep channels focused. Do not dump everything into one Slack channel. Separate by team responsibility so people only see what they need to act on.

Use Linear's triage workflow. Auto-created issues should go into a triage queue, not directly into sprint backlogs. Someone reviews the triage queue daily and promotes or closes issues.

Set up a daily support review. Even with automation, have someone spend 15 minutes each morning reviewing auto-resolved messages, checking Slack notifications that were not acted on, and clearing the Linear triage queue.

Thread Slack conversations. When someone acts on a support notification in Slack, they should reply in the thread so others know it is being handled. This prevents duplicate effort.