EscalatePricing

Thresholds

Thresholds control how many business days a sub-thread can stay silent before Escalate fires an alert. Configured per-role — Legal, Security, Compliance, Other — so you can tune the noise floor based on each function's natural response cadence.

Defaults

| Role | Default | Why | |---|---|---| | Legal | 2 business days | Contract redlines tend to flow daily; 2 BD past the ask = real silence. | | Security | 3 business days | Security reviews take cycles; 3 BD = "they haven't started." | | Compliance | 3 business days | Same shape as Security — reviews involve checklists, not instant replies. | | Other | 5 business days | Catch-all for roles you haven't mapped explicitly — slacker default. |

These are starting values. Most workspaces don't need to change them in the first month; if you're seeing too many alerts, see § "Tightening + loosening."

How to configure

Run /escalate config thresholds from any channel. A Slack modal opens with four numeric inputs (one per role) — enter the business-day count for each. Empty inputs fall back to the default.

Saving the modal applies the new thresholds to all sub-threads going forward. Existing in-flight silence-timers are NOT recomputed — they continue to use the threshold value in effect when the sub-thread started.

Tightening + loosening

When to tighten (lower the number)

  • You're seeing genuine stalls go unnoticed. A deal closes late because Legal sat on a redline for 4 days and Escalate didn't alert. Drop Legal from 2 BD to 1 BD.
  • Your team's natural response cadence is faster than the defaults. Some founder teams ping multiple times per business day; 2 BD is generous in that environment.
  • Trailing precision is high (>85%) and you want more signal density. You'd rather see one false positive per week than miss a real stall.

When to loosen (raise the number)

  • Trailing precision is below 60%. Most alerts you're seeing are false positives. Raise the threshold by 1 BD and see if the ratio improves. If it doesn't, the classifier — not the threshold — is the issue; ping the founder.
  • You're getting alerts on threads that turn out to be in-flight (e.g., Legal was waiting on a counterparty). Raise Legal to 3 BD or 4 BD; the counterparty wait is real silence that doesn't need a founder ping.
  • Your team explicitly told you "the alerts are too noisy." This is the most common signal; tune to taste.

When to leave defaults alone

  • First 30 days. Run the defaults. The trailing-precision number on /escalate stats after 30 days tells you whether the defaults are right for your workflow.
  • You're below the alert volume that would justify tuning. If you're getting 1–2 alerts per week and they're all legitimate, there's no signal to act on.

Threshold + classifier interaction

Thresholds and the classifier interact:

  • The classifier decides whether a sub-thread message is a substantive ask (vs. a routing question / completed task).
  • The threshold decides how long to wait before alerting on a substantive-ask sub-thread that hasn't gotten a substantive response.

If you raise the threshold but the classifier is misclassifying ("this routing question shouldn't count as an ask"), you'll mute some real alerts. The right diagnostic is the trailing-precision number — if it's high, the classifier is honest and threshold tuning is purely a noise-floor decision.

See Compliance for the classifier firewall narrative.

Per-role differences (V1.5+)

V1 supports four roles (Legal / Security / Compliance / Other) with one numeric threshold each. V1.5 may add:

  • Per-deal overrides ("this Acme deal needs 1-BD across all roles").
  • Per-counterparty timezone weighting ("EU customers respond Tuesday–Thursday; threshold should account").
  • Custom role labels beyond the four built-ins.

These are not in scope today. If your workspace needs one of them, ping the founder — V1.5 prioritization is demand-driven.

Common questions

What happens if I set a threshold to 0?

The modal rejects 0 with an inline error. Minimum is 1 BD.

What's the maximum?

The modal caps at 30 BD. Anything above that is operationally identical to "Escalate isn't watching this role." If you want to disable a role, ping the founder — V1.5 will add an explicit toggle.

Do thresholds apply retroactively?

No. New thresholds apply to sub-threads STARTED after the save.

Are weekends and holidays counted?

Weekends: no. Public holidays: no (V1) — see Alerts for the calendar math.

Next steps

  • Want to see your current numbers? /escalate stats.
  • Configure: /escalate config thresholds.
  • Understanding the trailing-precision number: Coverage Report.