Overview
Productlane is built on Linear. Issues, projects, customers, and your roadmap sync both ways, so your inbox, public roadmap, and changelog show the current state in Linear.
Connect Linear
Sign in to Productlane with your Linear account, or connect Linear from Settings → Integrations → Linear.
Connect with an account that has admin rights in Linear for full access to teams, customers, and projects.
The connection refreshes itself, so you stay connected without re-authenticating. Disconnecting requires an admin role in Productlane.
Choose teams and a default team
Select which Linear teams are visible in Productlane. Visible teams control where a team shows up in Productlane: issue search, the team picker when creating an issue, the portal roadmap, and AI changelogs.
Choose Synced teams to limit which teams Productlane imports customer requests from. Visible teams and synced teams are independent settings, so you can sync a team that is not visible. Comments and attachments go only to issues in those teams too. A thread links only to issues in synced teams, and the create-issue dialog offers only those teams. With no team chosen, every team syncs, including teams you add later.
Private Linear teams are not available. Make the team public in Linear to use it.
A public team is missing from the list. Productlane lists only the teams Linear gives it access to. If you chose Only select teams when you connected Linear, Productlane gets those teams only, and teams created later stay out of the list. To add them, reconnect from Settings → Integrations → Linear with a Linear admin account, then choose All teams on Linear's screen. Your threads and linked issues stay as they are. Reconnecting turns on every team Productlane can see and resets the default team, so check both afterwards.
Set a default team to speed up creating issues and projects. It is preselected in the create dialogs and used whenever an issue is created automatically.
What syncs
Two-way, in real time:
Issues - title, description, status, priority, assignee, and due date stay in sync. Create an issue in either tool and link it to a thread. When an issue moves to another Linear team, Linear gives it a new ID (for example, a different team prefix). Productlane updates the issue's ID, link, and team to match, and its linked threads stay attached.
Projects - name, description, status, team, icon, and color stay in sync.
Customers - name, revenue, tier, size, status, domains, and owner sync both ways. With Auto-create customers on, every new company syncs to Linear as a customer, with its owner, before any thread is linked. Set or change the owner in Linear and the company in Productlane shows it. Set or change it in Productlane (the customer panel on a thread, the Customers page, or
owner_idin the API) and the Linear customer updates. Clearing the owner in Productlane does not clear it in Linear. Clear it in Linear and the change syncs back.Comments - internal comments sync both ways, and the customer conversation is mirrored into a pinned comment you can reply to. See "Comments and conversation sync" below.
From Linear into Productlane:
Customer requests - requests attached to a Linear issue appear on the linked Productlane thread.
Public roadmap - your roadmap mirrors your Linear projects and their statuses.
Threads for synced issues - a thread that Productlane creates for a synced Linear issue starts as Done. These threads usually need no follow-up, and starting them open would add a thread to your inbox for every synced issue.
From Productlane into Linear:
Thread backlinks - linking a thread to an issue adds an attachment on the Linear issue that points back to the conversation, with the sender, origin, and title.
If something is out of sync with Linear: when an issue, project, or customer does not match Linear, press Cmd + K (Ctrl + K on Windows) and run Sync Linear. Disconnecting and reconnecting Linear under Settings → Integrations → Linear also works.
Comments and conversation sync
When a thread is linked to a Linear issue, Productlane keeps the conversation visible in both places. The anchor comment, titled "Productlane thread connected", and replying from Linear both need Reply to customers from Linear, turned on in Productlane's own Linear settings under Settings → Integrations → Linear, not inside Linear itself. Turn that setting off there to stop the "Productlane thread connected" comment from being posted on linked issues at all, which is the way to keep your Linear inbox from filling up with Productlane comments. With it off, replying to that comment in Linear no longer sends a message to the customer, since the anchor comment is what enables that reply path. Other parts of the Linear connection, like changelog generation from completed projects, keep working either way.
Internal comments sync both ways. A comment or reply added on a thread in Productlane is posted as a comment on the linked Linear issue, and a comment added on that issue in Linear appears back on the thread. Edits and deletes sync too, including replies. There is no setting to turn this off, and turning off Reply to customers from Linear does not stop it either, since that setting only controls the anchor comment described above. To cut down on noise from synced comments, resolve a comment thread from either side instead; see Internal comments and mentions.
The customer conversation is mirrored into a pinned anchor comment. As soon as a thread is linked to an issue, Productlane posts an anchor comment on the issue linking back to the thread, backfills it with the existing conversation, then adds every new message (email, Slack, live chat, Productlane Agent replies, and Microsoft Teams) under it as it happens, so the full conversation is readable from Linear.
Attachments are mirrored too. Images and files sent or received on the thread are added to the mirrored message: images are embedded inline in the Linear comment, and other files appear as links.
Replying to the anchor comment in Linear sends the reply to the customer through the thread's original channel, exactly as if you replied from the Productlane inbox. The reply includes the same quoted conversation history and email signature a manual reply from the inbox would include. Replies to any other comment on the issue stay internal in Productlane and are never sent to the customer.
Sending requires a Productlane seat that is not Viewer. Viewers, and Linear users with no matching Productlane account, get a warning reply and their message is not sent. If sending fails (for example, a suppressed email address), Productlane posts a warning reply under the anchor explaining why.
If a thread is linked to more than one Linear issue, the conversation is mirrored to each linked issue's anchor comment.
If the anchor comment becomes stale (for example, the thread's linked issue changed), Productlane automatically rebuilds the anchor on the current issue the next time a message needs to be mirrored.
Deleted projects and issues in Linear
When a project or issue is deleted in Linear, Productlane does not permanently remove it. Instead, it is moved to the Closed status and appears in the Closed section on your roadmap. If someone deletes a Linear project or issue by mistake, its linked threads and customer requests stay visible in Productlane.
To permanently remove a closed project or issue, delete it directly inside Productlane.
Turn threads into issues
Link any thread to an existing Linear issue or project, or create a new one from the thread. Productlane records it as a customer request on the issue, along with the feedback and the contact. The picker hides completed projects and duplicate issues until you search for them by name, and lists projects with the most recently updated ones first. When you create an issue from a thread, the dialog opens with the conversation, and the agent bar at the bottom edits it on request, such as "Fix formatting" or "Assign it to me". See Automatic issue creation.
Issue filing decides who files issues from threads: Manual, Suggest, where the agent drafts cards you file or link with one click, Agent, where it files them itself, or Every thread, which files an issue for every new thread from your customer channels. Threads closed by an auto-reply are skipped, and new issues start in the team's triage state. See Automatic issue creation.
Leave the title blank when you create an issue in the dashboard, or when you convert a tag to an issue, and Productlane writes the title from the description. Each generated title counts against your workspace's daily thread title limit. Once the limit is used up, or if title generation fails, Productlane still creates the issue and uses the first line of the description as the title, cut to about 80 characters. The create dialog still asks for a title when the description is empty too. The public API and MCP require a title.
Issue templates
Apply one of your Linear issue templates when you create an issue from Productlane. See Linear issue templates.
Automations
Auto-assign to customer owner - route a thread to the workspace member who owns the Linear customer. It uses the same owner field that syncs between Linear and Productlane.
Auto-assign Productlane Agent to bugs - under Settings > AI > Productlane Agent, sends bugs to your Cursor agent so a fix can start before you reply. See Cursor.
Suggest issues and tags - shows a Similar in Linear box in the thread sidebar with up to 3 open issues or projects that match the thread, on threads from any channel. Link adds one as a customer request, the same as picking it in the Linear picker. Tags the system suggests appear as dashed chips. With Issue filing set to Manual, the box suggests tags only.
Changelog drafts - completing a project in Linear can generate a changelog draft automatically, ready for you to review and publish.
Linear permission scope
When you connect Productlane, Linear shows the prompt "Read access to your workspace". Here is exactly what that covers and why each part is needed.
Objects Productlane reads
Object | Fields used |
|---|---|
Issues | Title, description, status, priority, assignee, due date, labels, attachments |
Projects | Name, description, status, team, icon, color |
Customers | Name, revenue, tier, size, status, domains, owner |
Teams | Name, identifier, states, labels, members |
States | Name, type, for mapping issue status |
Labels | Name, color, for display and filtering |
Members | Name, avatar, for assignee display and auto-assignment |
Productlane reads no billing data, and nothing outside the teams you select.
Team scope
If you choose Only select teams during setup, Productlane syncs only those teams. Issues, projects, states, labels, and members from teams you did not select are never fetched. Teams you create in Linear later are not included until you reconnect and pick them.
If you choose All teams, every public team in your Linear workspace is included. Private teams are excluded regardless of this setting.
Write access
In addition to reading, Productlane writes back to Linear in these ways:
Attachments - adds a backlink on an issue when you link a thread to it.
Issues and projects - creates or updates issues and projects when you act from Productlane (for example, creating an issue from a thread or syncing a status change).
Comments - posts, updates, and deletes comments on an issue to keep internal comments and the mirrored conversation in sync (see "Comments and conversation sync" above).