Troubleshooting

Symptoms first. Find yours, apply the fix, move on.

I cannot sign in

Magic link never arrived. Check spam, then check that you are using the same address you were invited at. An invite to marina@acme.com cannot be accepted by marina@gmail.com — ask for a new invite to the address you want to use.

Google sign-in bounces back. You probably have more than one Google account signed in. Sign out of the others, or use a private window.

It says my account already exists. It does — sign in instead of signing up. If you first signed up with Google and now want a magic link, both routes reach the same account as long as the email matches.

A feature I read about is not there

Work through this in order:

1. Your admin turned the module off. Chat, wiki, whiteboards, the schema designer, and initiatives can each be switched off for the whole workspace. When they are, they are hidden for everyone — there is no greyed-out button to find. Ask an admin. See Workspace settings.
2. It is a Pro feature and you are on Free. Chat, initiatives, custom fields, mirrors, the API, MCP, and the audit log are all Pro. See Plans and billing.
3. Your role does not reach it. Guests see only their projects; workspace settings and billing are admin-only. See Roles and permissions.
4. It is web-only. The timeline, whiteboards, and workspace settings are not in the mobile app. See dotby on mobile.

The app looks stale after my laptop woke up

Reload the page.

A long sleep can drop the live connection, and although the app reconnects on its own, a hard reload is the fastest way to be certain you are looking at current data. If it happens repeatedly on the same machine, tell us — that is a bug, not a workflow.

My keyboard shortcuts stopped working

Single-letter shortcuts are suppressed while your cursor is in a text field — an input, a title, a comment, a filter box. That is deliberate: typing “created” in a comment should not create seven tasks.

Click on empty space, or press Esc, then try again.

⌘K works everywhere, always.

If a G chord does nothing, you may have waited too long — you have a little over a second to press the second key. And while a G is armed, the next key either completes a chord or does nothing at all, so a mistyped chord can never create a task by accident.

I am not getting notifications

Check these in order:

1. Preferences. Each notification type has its own switch.
2. The digest. If you are on the daily digest, comment activity arrives once a day rather than immediately. That is working as configured.
3. Quiet hours. Anything inside your quiet window is held.
4. Spam folder, and whether dotby.app is allowed by your mail server.
5. You are not actually involved. You hear about assignments, mentions, replies, and work you follow — not everything that happens.

See Notifications and Inbox.

I got too many emails at once

Somebody mentioned @everyone or a team you are in. Each person is notified individually so nobody misses it, which is the right behavior and the wrong volume when it is overused.

Switch comment activity to the daily digest and keep realtime email for assignments and mentions.

The board is empty but I know there are tasks

Almost always a filter.

• The Closed button may be hiding completed and dropped tasks. A count shows what is hidden.
• A filter may still be applied from earlier. Filters live in the URL — check the address bar.
• You may be on a saved view with its own filters rather than the default.

An image or file will not open

Signed file links are short-lived on purpose. If you left a tab open for hours, reload the page to get a fresh link.

If an Office document will not preview, check that the Office preview module is on for your workspace.

My task numbers changed after a move

They did not. WEB-42 stays WEB-42 forever, even after moving to another project. If a number looks different, you are looking at a different task — search the number in the command palette to confirm.

An API call returns 404 for something I can see

not_found_or_forbidden is deliberately ambiguous: it means missing, or invisible to this token. A token carries its owner’s permissions, so a key owned by someone without access to a private project gets a 404, not a 403.

Check which account owns the key. See API keys and tokens.

An API call returns 403 upgrade_required

The workspace is on Free. API and MCP access are Pro features.

Note that a subscription in past_due or canceled falls back to Free limits even though the plan still reads Pro — fix the payment method.

My agent cannot see a project

An agent inherits your access exactly. If the project is private and you were never added, neither you nor your agent can see it. Adding yourself fixes both at once.

Still stuck

Email hello@dotby.app. Include your workspace name and what you expected to happen — it saves a round trip.

Next

• FAQ — the questions that are not bugs.
• Keyboard shortcuts — when and why they fire.