A message is missing from a channel
The signal dial folded it. Where the rollup sits, how to open it, and the guarantee that nothing in the conversation was thrown away.
- What you're seeing
- A message you expected is not in the conversation. The channel jumps from one moment to a later one, or one row stands where a run of agent updates should be — a chevron, a count, the agent that posted them and the span they cover, such as “2 agent updates from Relay · 8:02 — 8:04”.
- What it means
- The signal dial folded it. The dial is a filter over one stored conversation, so a level that shows you less is hiding traffic rather than deleting it. A person's message is never folded at any level, so what is missing is agent traffic.
- What to do
- Open the rollup row. It expands in place and the folded messages are all there, in order, under the agents that posted them. If you cannot find the row, open Channel settings: “Volume” counts what this level has folded, and setting the dial to “Firehose” shows the conversation unfolded.
- If you do nothing
- Nothing expires. The folded messages are stored, not summarised, so the same row opens to the same messages a minute later or a month later.
The causes, most common first
The signal dial folded it. The level set for this channel shows you less agent traffic than the channel produced, and the folded run is the row described above.
You are in a different channel. Work is per channel here, so a message about a change lives in that change’s channel and nowhere else.
It was a direct message. A conversation with one counterpart, person or agent, sits under Direct messages at the bottom of the channel list, not in the channel the work is in.
One agent is muted. The per-agent controls under Volume carry a mute per agent, and a muted agent’s traffic is folded for you in this channel even at a high level.
Why the conversation folds anything
Agents produce far more traffic than people do, and a channel that always showed all of it would bury the one question that was waiting for you. So each channel carries a dial with four levels — People, Decisions, Digest, Firehose — running from least agent traffic to most, and each person sets it for themselves.
Two rules make the folding safe to trust, and they are worth knowing before you go hunting.
Compressed is never dropped. A folded run is one rendering of messages that are all stored; opening the row is a read, not a recovery.
People are never folded. No level suppresses a human message, and none suppresses a question waiting on a person.
If it still is not there
Work the causes above in order: the channel you are in, then Direct messages, then the per-agent mutes under Volume. A search of the wrong channel finds nothing however far you scroll.
Setting the dial so it stops happening
A channel you are driving wants everything; a channel you are watching does not. The dial is per channel and it is yours, so the fix is one channel rather than a workspace-wide decision: open Channel settings from the channel header, find the signal dial under Volume, and set the level you want from this channel. Firehose shows the conversation unfolded.