Threads

A thread is a conversation with an agent. Every agent run on the platform happens inside one, marked by its type:

• chat: a conversation you start to ask a question or explore a problem.
• investigation: the coordinating engagement on one confirmed issue, embedded in that issue. See Investigations.
• hypothesis: a sub-agent testing one hypothesis inside an investigation.
• automation: one automation run.
• autofix: an agent drafting a pull request that fixes something. See Autofix.
• pr_review: an agent reviewing a pull request against what it knows about your infrastructure.

All types share the same surface: streamed responses, tool calls in the transcript, citations, artifacts, and sharing. Agents can also spawn sub-agent threads that nest under the parent thread.

Start a thread

From the console, click New thread and type a prompt:

Which services call our production PlanetScale database, and which of them
deployed in the last 24 hours? Cite every claim back to its source.

From the command line interface:

polylane thread ask "why did p99 latency on api-gateway rise since 14:20 UTC?" --stream

--stream prints assistant tokens as they arrive. Drop it for a single blocking reply, or pass --no-wait to return immediately after sending. Attach grounding context with --context and comma-separated resource IDs:

polylane thread ask "summarize recent deploys" --context repo_abc123,acc_xyz789

From Slack, mention Polylane in a channel or send it a direct message. Replies in the same Slack thread continue the same Polylane thread. From the browser extension, open the side panel with Cmd+B / Ctrl+B and start typing.

Every thread records its origin: web console, command line interface, API, Model Context Protocol, Slack, browser extension, email, a sub-agent, or the platform itself. Context can be repositories, cloud accounts, integrations, topology nodes, resource wikis, memories, issues, change records, pull requests, or other threads.

Use polylane to start a thread and ask: which of our Cloudflare Workers had error rate changes this week, and what deployed to them?

Watch and interrupt a run

Responses stream live, and every tool call and result lands in the transcript as it happens. While a run is streaming, a stop button replaces the send button; click it to cancel the turn. The thread list can filter to threads with a run in progress.

When an agent wants to make a write call against a cloud account that requires confirmation, the run pauses and shows you the exact call. Approve it, or reject it with an optional reason the agent reads before continuing.

Citations

Answers carry numbered reference badges inline. Hover one to see the source: its title, where it came from, and a summary of the cited content. Tool results in the transcript hold the raw data behind each claim.

Artifacts

Agents produce artifacts alongside the conversation: reports, diagrams, hypotheses with verdicts, pull requests, GitHub issues, and monitors or dashboards created on providers such as Datadog, Honeycomb, Axiom, and Sentry. Artifacts are versioned, and each thread has an artifacts panel listing everything it produced.

Sharing and export

Threads are private by default. Share one with your workspace or a team, or make it public and copy the link, which anyone can open without signing in. Export a transcript from the command line:

polylane thread export thrd_abc123 --format pdf --out investigation.pdf

CLI and API reference

polylane thread ask "<prompt>" [--context <ids>] [--stream] [--no-wait]
polylane thread continue <thread-id> "<follow-up>" [--stream]
polylane thread list [--type chat,investigation] [--labels <a,b>]
polylane thread show <thread-id>
polylane thread export <thread-id> [--format md|pdf] [--out <path>]

# Create a thread
curl -X POST https://api.polylane.com/v1/threads \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $POLYLANE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"workspaceId": "<workspace-id>", "prompt": "Why is latency high?", "visibility": "private"}'

# Get a thread
curl https://api.polylane.com/v1/threads/<workspace-id>/<thread-id> \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $POLYLANE_API_KEY"

See the CLI reference and the API reference.