Transactional Email and In-App Notifications

What it does

/notify is a Cursor slash command. Type it in chat to run a saved workflow: Transactional Email and In-App Notifications.

Adds transactional templates and triggers. Not a marketing drip (use /email-sequence).

Welcome, magic link, invoice, bell, preferences. Unlike a skill, a command is something you invoke on purpose. The agent does not decide to run /notify for you.

Why it exists

Founders retype the same multi-step prompt until it rots. /notify exists so the pipeline, all 4 steps of it, is a file in .cursor/commands, versioned with the repo.

It ships in the Engineering Kit. It is wired to Transactional Notifications Engineer (notifications-engineer), API Integration Specialist (api-engineer), and React 19 & Next.js Specialist (react-specialist). Required skills: Transactional Email & In-App Notify; REST & API Route Design Patterns; Resilient Error Handling & Fault Tolerance.

When to use it

• Use when the product must send a required email or in-app bell.
• Use /notify when you want that pipeline, not a freeform chat. If you only need one step, use a narrower command or a single agent.
• Start a new chat. Do not run this command in a thread that just wrote marketing copy.

When not to use it

• Do not run /notify as a substitute for reading the diff. The command produces files; you still gate them.
• Do not chain it into a 40-turn chat. Fresh context is part of the design.
• Do not run it if you have not filled CURSOR.md. The pipeline will invent a stack.

Example workflow

1. notifications-engineer inventories required messages
2. api-engineer implements send + preference APIs
3. react-specialist builds preference UI if needed
4. Save template map to docs/product/notifications.md

Example usage

Type this in Cursor chat: /notify Magic link + payment failed + in-app bell with preference center

The command file tells the session which agents to adopt and which skills to read. You should see phase headers, not a single dump of code.

If a phase fails its gate, stop. Do not add 'just continue'.

Example output

• Expected artifact: docs/product/notifications.md
• Expected artifact: src/lib/notify.ts

Best practices

• Keep the prompt specific. /notify Magic link + payment failed + in-app bell with preference center is the shape: object, constraint, and outcome.
• Let the listed agents work in order: notifications-engineer → api-engineer → react-specialist.
• Save outputs in the repo. Chat-only answers evaporate.
• Engineering commands should leave tests or an audit note, not only implementation files.

Common mistakes

• Typing /notify with no object ('do the thing'). The pipeline will guess.
• Re-running the command in the same chat after a failed gate instead of fixing the failing file.
• Editing the command file to skip review so it 'goes faster'.
• Skipping the Transactional Email & In-App Notify skill that the command depends on.