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Document subscribers

Outcome

You can see who in the project gets e-mails about a native document — when a reader of a shared link comments or replies, approves a version or withdraws an approval — and you can turn those e-mails on or off for yourself.

Before you begin

  • You are a project member with any role, viewer included.
  • AI agents can read the same list through MCP: kb_list_document_subscribers (scope kb.read, names only, no e-mail addresses). There is no MCP tool to change a subscription.

Who gets the e-mails

Open Knowledge → Documents and the document. Under the fields of the document card, the Subscribers line shows who gets the e-mails, how many there are and whether you are one of them. Open Who gets e-mails about readers' comments and approvals for the full list with names, addresses and why each person is on it.

  • Authors of any version of the document are subscribed automatically — you do not have to do anything to get e-mails about a document you wrote.
  • Other members subscribe themselves.
  • Anyone, an author included, can unsubscribe. Unsubscribing also holds for versions you write later.
  • Only current members of the project are listed or e-mailed. Someone who left the project gets nothing, even if they subscribed before.
  • When nobody is subscribed, the project's admins and owners get the e-mails instead — except those who unsubscribed from this document. The line then reads "Nobody subscribed — N admins get these e-mails". If they unsubscribed too, it reads "Nobody — no one gets these e-mails": comments and approvals still appear on the document page, but no one is e-mailed.

Subscribe or unsubscribe

  1. Open the document.
  2. In the Subscribers line, select Subscribe or Unsubscribe.

The button switches to the opposite action, and the line updates at once: the count and the avatars change, "including you" appears or disappears, and the full list under Who gets e-mails about readers' comments and approvals shows you, or no longer does. After you unsubscribe, a note there confirms it.

You can change only your own subscription; nobody can subscribe or unsubscribe someone else. If you get the e-mails as an admin because nobody is subscribed, the button reads Unsubscribe too.

Selecting Subscribe after you unsubscribed puts you back the way you were — as an author, or as an admin of the fallback while nobody is subscribed — without changing who else gets the e-mails.

Common problems

Symptom Likely cause What to do
There is no Subscribe / Unsubscribe button The document is archived: its subscriptions cannot change Unarchive the document first (Archive, duplicate and restore documents)
"This project's notification rule decides who gets e-mails about …, not this list." An admin set a project notification rule for that kind of e-mail; it replaces the subscriber list Ask a project admin
You wrote the document but get no e-mails You unsubscribed earlier ("You unsubscribed as an author.") Select Subscribe
A colleague should get the e-mails Only they can subscribe themselves Ask them to open the document and select Subscribe