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The notificationPolicies section of devhelm.yml controls how incidents are routed to alert channels. Each policy has match rules that filter incidents and an escalation chain that defines notification steps.

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Policy fields

FieldTypeRequiredDescription
namestringYesUnique policy name
enabledboolean—Whether the policy is active (default: true)
priorityinteger—Evaluation priority (higher = evaluated first, default: 0)
matchRulesobject[]—Rules that filter which incidents trigger this policy
escalationobjectYesEscalation chain definition

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Match rules

Match rules filter which incidents trigger the policy. If no rules are defined, the policy matches all incidents. 
notificationPolicies:
  - name: Production Alerts
    matchRules:
      - type: tag
        values: [production]
      - type: region
        regions: [us-east, eu-west]
FieldTypeRequiredDescription
typestringYesRule type (e.g., tag, monitor_name, region)
valuestring—Single match value
valuesstring[]—Multiple match values
monitorNamesstring[]—Monitor names to match (resolved to IDs)
regionsstring[]—Regions to match

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Escalation chain

The escalation chain defines an ordered sequence of notification steps: 
notificationPolicies:
  - name: Critical Alerts
    priority: 10
    escalation:
      steps:
        - channels: [Slack Alerts]
          delayMinutes: 0
        - channels: [PagerDuty On-Call]
          delayMinutes: 5
          requireAck: true
          repeatIntervalSeconds: 300
      onResolve: Slack Alerts
      onReopen: PagerDuty On-Call

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Steps

FieldTypeRequiredDescription
channelsstring[]YesAlert channel names to notify
delayMinutesinteger—Minutes to wait before this step (default: 0)
requireAckboolean—Require acknowledgement before escalating
repeatIntervalSecondsinteger—Seconds between repeated notifications

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Lifecycle hooks

FieldTypeDescription
onResolvestringChannel name to notify when incident resolves
onReopenstringChannel name to notify when incident reopens

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Priority and evaluation

Policies are evaluated in descending priority order. The first matching policy handles the incident. Use priority to ensure specific policies (e.g., production-only) take precedence: 
notificationPolicies:
  - name: Production Critical
    priority: 20
    matchRules:
      - type: tag
        values: [production]
    escalation:
      steps:
        - channels: [PagerDuty On-Call]

  - name: Default Alerts
    priority: 0
    escalation:
      steps:
        - channels: [Slack Alerts]

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Complete example

notificationPolicies:
  - name: Tiered Escalation
    enabled: true
    priority: 10
    matchRules:
      - type: tag
        values: [production, critical]
    escalation:
      steps:
        - channels: [Slack Alerts]
          delayMinutes: 0
        - channels: [PagerDuty On-Call]
          delayMinutes: 5
          requireAck: true
        - channels: [Ops Email]
          delayMinutes: 15
      onResolve: Slack Alerts

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Next steps

Alert channels

Define the channels referenced in your policies.

Notification policies reference

Understanding match rules and escalation logic.