What attn promises, and why it exists
A deliberately small alert service for pinging yourself — nothing more, nothing creepier.
The basics
What is attn.ca?
A dead-simple personal alert service. You pair destinations you own, mint an API key, and POST a message to ping yourself on Telegram or in your browser. Think “PagerDuty, but way simpler” — for one person.
Why does it exist?
Most alerting tools assume a team, an on-call rota, and per-seat billing. Sometimes you just want your own scripts, jobs, and agents to tap you on the shoulder. attn does that one thing with the least possible ceremony.
Can I send notifications to other people?
No, by design. A notification can only reach channels you have paired and verified. There is no recipient field. That keeps attn spam-free and keeps you in control.
Delivery & reliability
What are the delivery guarantees?
Each accepted notification is fanned out to every verified channel and retried per channel with backoff — delivery is at-least-once. Send an optional dedup_key so retries from your side are de-duplicated.
I have several devices. Do they all get pinged?
Yes. Pair as many Telegram chats and browsers as you like; every verified channel receives each notification.
How do I silence alerts during a storm?
Turn on Do Not Disturb from your dashboard for a bounded window (up to 8 hours). Silenced notifications still appear in your activity as missed, and DND always expires on its own — there is no permanent mute, so you can’t forget it’s on.
Pricing & data
Is it free?
Self-notification over Telegram and Web Push is free. Higher-cost channels (e.g. SMS or email) may later be offered on a paid/credit tier — there are no hidden charges on the free path.
What data do you keep?
Your account, your verified channels, and a recent history of the notifications you send (title, body, priority, and per-channel delivery status) so the dashboard can show activity. Channel secrets (Telegram chat ids, push endpoints) are never exposed back through the API.
How do I stop using it?
Revoke your API keys and remove your channels from the dashboard. Revocation takes effect immediately.
For developers
Is there an API and an MCP server?
Yes — a JSON REST API and a first-class MCP server with six tools. See the developer guide, the MCP section, and openapi.json.
What are the scopes?
attn:notify sends, attn:read reads activity and status, and attn:channels manages channels. Keys are audience-bound to attn.ca.