Docs · Features

Queries

A query is a threaded question or comment on a project, document, segment or string key: one conversation per thread, visible to everyone who can see the project, with an open, answered, closed lifecycle, an optional assignee, and email notifications. A query never blocks a workflow and never moves money.

What it does#

A query thread anchors to exactly one thing, a segment, a string key, a document, or a project, and it is visible whole to everyone who can see that project, including a customer-bound client. There is no per-post or per-thread privacy split: what one person writes, everyone with access sees. Posts are append-only, a human post carries the author's email and a vendor post carries a free-text display label rather than an account, and there is no edit and no per-post delete.

A thread moves through a simple lifecycle. It starts open. A plain reply never flips it to answered, only an explicit answer does, because the system cannot tell an answer from a "me too." A reply from the original author on an already-answered thread reopens it, since the author is asking again. Setting an assignee emails that person and puts the thread on their My work page; the assignee must already be an active user who can see the thread's own project, so an assignment can never become an obligation nobody can act on.

Anyone who can view a project may open a query on it, including a customer-bound client. That is deliberate: it is exactly the audience a query exists to serve. Closing and reopening need the thread's author, its assignee, or a reviewer or higher; assigning needs the author or a reviewer or higher.

Getting started#

Open a query wherever the question already lives: the Queries page, or directly from an editor row, a document, a project, or a key.

Pick a scope: one segment, key, document, or project.
Write a subject and a body, and optionally set an assignee.
Reply and mark the thread answered when you have one, or close it when it is resolved.

From the command line:

query open --segment 4821 --body "Is Acme Cloud a product name or a company name here?"
query reply 91 --body "Product name, keep it in English."
query answer 91 --body "Confirmed, leave untranslated."
query close 91

The same actions are available over the API and through MCP tools for agent-driven workflows.

Works with#

Documents: a query most often anchors to a segment or document you are reviewing, and the editor row and document page link straight to the thread.
Vendors: open queries on a dispatched segment ride out on the vendor package, and a vendor's shared comments come back as first-class posts in the same thread.
Workflows: a vendor-originated query is assigned to the paused review step's assignee, or the run's owner, so it lands on a person's My work page.

Current limits#

Current limits

Every size limit is enforced as a named refusal, never a silent truncation: a subject is capped at 200 characters, a post body at 4000, a thread at 200 posts, and a segment at 20 open threads, with a list page returning at most 50 rows at a time. Going over any of these tells you which one, on every surface.

A thread is one conversation, visible whole to everyone who can see the project. There is no internal or private post, so if a segment is out with a vendor, a query on it is carried to the vendor with the next package, and a customer-bound client can see the vendor's reply in the same thread. The compose form discloses this at the time you write.

Notifications are email only. There is no in-app notification center, digest, or webhook target. An unassigned query notifies nobody, by design; if outbound email is not configured, no notification is sent at all, so the query lists and the My work page are the only in-app signal that something is waiting.

Posts are append-only: there is no edit, no per-post delete, and no thread delete on any surface. Closing is the exit; a thread and its posts are removed only when their parent record is deleted or through a data-erasure request.

On the manual, file-based vendor path, queries travel out to the vendor as notes but a third-party CAT tool's arbitrary notes are never admitted back as customer-visible posts. Comments only return through the vendor's own return path.