Severity & Critical

severity and critical are two independent workflow-level dials. Most workflows set neither.

Severity

Value	Meaning	When to use
unset	No prioritization	Default. Use for the vast majority of workflows.
LOW	Informational, no urgency	Marketing nudges, low-priority lifecycle.
MEDIUM	Worth surfacing	Mentions, light alerts.
HIGH	"Deal with this today"	Payment failed, trial expiring tomorrow, KYC required.

Severity is purely visual — it does not change preferences, digest, or delivery. It only affects how the Inbox renders the notification (color, glow, bell color), and informs the digest skip rule below.

See inbox-integration/SKILL.md ("Severity styling") for the visual mapping (colorSeverityHigh, severityHigh__notificationBar, etc.).

Critical

critical: true is the runtime override. When set:

• Subscriber preferences are bypassed. The notification is delivered even if the subscriber disabled the channel.
• Digest is skipped. Each trigger delivers immediately; no aggregation.
• No delays. All steps run as fast as possible.
• All available channels fire in parallel (Push still gated by subscriber.isOnline == false).

Reserve critical: true for must-deliver events:

• Account suspended / blocked
• Security alert (new device login, suspicious activity)
• Forgot password / OTP delivery
• Legal or compliance notices

A workflow can be critical: true with severity unset — the two dials don't depend on each other.

readOnly vs critical — the trap

These are easy to confuse. They control different things:

Flag	Where it lives	What it does
preferences.all.readOnly: true	Workflow's preference defaults	Hides the workflow from the Preferences UI. Subscribers can't toggle channels for it.
critical: true	Workflow-level flag	Bypasses preferences, digest, and delays at runtime. Delivers regardless of opt-out.

In practice you usually want critical: true (forces delivery). readOnly: true alone just removes the toggle from the UI but does not override existing subscriber overrides. See manage-preferences/SKILL.md for the resolution order.

Behavior Matrix

Scenario	Preferences applied?	Digest runs?	Delays applied?	Inbox styling
severity unset, critical: false	yes	yes	yes	default
severity: HIGH, critical: false	yes	no	yes	high
severity: HIGH, critical: true	no	no	no	high
severity unset, critical: true	no	no	no	default

Digest is automatically skipped when severity: HIGH or critical: true.

Picking the Right Combination

Use case	severity	critical
Order confirmation	unset	false
Comment on your post	unset	false
Payment failed	HIGH	false
Trial expiring tomorrow	HIGH	false
Account suspended (KYC required)	HIGH	true
Forgot password / OTP	unset	true
Security alert	HIGH	true
Marketing / weekly newsletter	unset	false

Common Pitfalls

1. Setting severity: HIGH doesn't make the workflow critical — it still respects preferences and runs delays. Add critical: true if you need bypass.
2. critical: true doesn't auto-set severity — set severity: HIGH explicitly if you also want the high-severity Inbox styling.
3. Don't mark marketing workflows critical — bypassing preferences for promotional content damages trust and is a deliverability risk.
4. readOnly: true won't force delivery — it only hides the workflow toggle. Use critical: true to actually force delivery.

See Also

• channel-selection.md — how critical expands the channel mix
• digest-defaults.md — when digest is auto-skipped
• workflow-templates.md — templates that show critical in context
• manage-preferences/SKILL.md — preference resolution order