A thread can move to Completed without a teammate clicking anything. This is expected behavior, not a bug: Productlane closes the loop automatically in a few specific situations. This article lists every automatic trigger and how to trace which one fired on a given thread.
When the Productlane Agent answers a customer in the widget, live chat, or docs and is confident the request is handled, it marks that thread Completed itself. No teammate is involved.
This only happens when the Agent does not hand the conversation off. A handoff behaves differently:
If a customer asks for a person, or the Agent can't resolve the conversation confidently, it hands the thread to your team instead.
A handed-off thread stays open. Productlane does not mark it Done, so it keeps showing up in your open-thread views until a teammate handles it.
So if a thread closed with no agent reply in it, the most common cause is the Productlane Agent resolving it on its own. See Productlane Agent.
If a thread is linked to a Linear issue and that issue is marked Completed in Linear (or in Productlane), the thread is automatically marked Completed too, whether or not anyone replied to the customer first. See Linear.
The same happens when a thread is linked to a roadmap project: marking the project Completed automatically marks every linked thread that wasn't already Completed as Completed as well.
Note: Only threads that were not already Completed get affected when a project completes. This avoids reprocessing threads that are already closed.
Open the thread's activity timeline. Automatic actions are recorded there, for example:
AI Agent handed this conversation to the team if a handoff happened instead of a close.
AI Agent ran N actions if the Agent took several actions in a short stretch before resolving the conversation. Expand it to see each one, and whether any failed.
Check whether the thread is linked to a Linear issue or a roadmap project. If it is, open that issue or project in Linear and check its status. A status of Completed there is what closed the thread, not a teammate action in Productlane.
Look for an AI-drafted close-the-loop message. If "Send close-the-loop drafts" is enabled, a short AI-written follow-up telling the customer their request is handled lands in the composer whenever a thread completes this way. See Close-the-loop drafts. If that draft is sitting unsent, the thread closed before anyone reviewed it.
If none of these explain a closure, reopen the thread and escalate it with the thread link so the specific automation that fired can be traced.
Setting | Where | Effect on closing |
|---|---|---|
Productlane Agent |
| Lets the Agent resolve and close chats itself instead of only drafting |
Send close-the-loop drafts |
| Adds a follow-up draft whenever a thread completes, it does not control whether the thread closes |
Linear issue/project sync |
| Completing a linked issue or project closes the linked thread |
