Linear Connection

The Linear connection integrates your Linear workspace with OpsTower, giving agents the ability to search issues, view issue details with comments, list teams and labels, and create new issues. This is OpsTower’s first ticketing integration, enabling automated issue creation from systems operations reports.

Prerequisites

You need a Linear account with an active workspace. Any Linear plan that supports API access will work.

Credentials Required

To set up a Linear connection, you need:

• API Key — a personal API key from your Linear account (starts with lin_api_)

How to Create an API Key

1. In Linear, go to Settings > Preferences > Security & Access.
2. Under Personal API keys, click Create key.
3. Give it a descriptive label (e.g., “OpsTower”).
4. Copy the generated key (starts with lin_api_) and paste it into OpsTower.

API keys inherit the permissions of the user who creates them. The key can access all teams and projects the user has access to.

Setting Up the Connection in OpsTower

1. In OpsTower, navigate to Connections in the sidebar.
2. Click Add Connection and select Linear from the Tickets category.
3. Enter your API Key.
4. Optionally add Ticketing Instructions — custom guidance for agents when creating or searching tickets (e.g., default team, labels, priority rules).
5. Click Test Connection to verify your credentials.
6. Click Save to create the connection.

Ticketing Instructions

The Ticketing Instructions field is a free-text area (up to 2000 characters) where you can provide custom guidance for agents. This is injected into the agent’s context when it uses the Linear tools. Examples:

• “Always assign bugs to the Engineering team using label ‘from-opstower’.”
• “Default priority should be Medium unless the issue affects payments.”
• “Use the ENG team for backend issues and the FE team for frontend issues.”

These instructions help agents follow your team’s conventions when creating tickets.

What Agents Can Do with Linear

Once connected and enabled on an agent, the agent can:

• Search issues — filter issues by team, state type, label, and more
• Get issue details — retrieve a specific issue by identifier (e.g., ENG-123) with full description, comments, labels, and assignee
• List teams — discover available teams with their keys and member counts
• List labels — discover available labels for tagging issues
• Create issues — file new issues with title, description, team, priority, labels, and assignee

When creating issues, agents are instructed to confirm with the user first (in chat mode) or follow the auto-ticketing configuration (in report mode).

Auto-Ticketing in Reports

When a Linear connection is added to a Systems Operations report’s data sources, you can enable auto-ticketing. The report agent will automatically create Linear tickets for issues discovered during the report run. You can configure:

• Scope: All issues — create tickets for every issue found
• Scope: Code-related only — create tickets only for issues classified as code bugs

Tickets include the issue classification, severity, relevant log excerpts, and a link back to the report. See Reports Overview for more details.

Troubleshooting

• Authentication failed: Verify your API key is correct and starts with lin_api_. Ensure the key has not been revoked in Linear’s settings.
• No teams found: The API key inherits your user permissions. Make sure your Linear account has access to at least one team.
• Issue creation failed: Ensure you are providing a valid team ID. Use the list teams tool first to discover available team IDs.
• Ticketing instructions not applied: Instructions are injected into the agent’s system prompt. They guide the agent’s behavior but are not hard constraints — the agent uses its judgment to apply them contextually.