How do I write @mentions to get the most accurate classification?

AI Mention Triage classifies every @mention automatically, but how you phrase a deadline or a request affects how accurately it’s classified. This article covers what to know if you want more reliable results.

Deadlines: be specific when you can

AMT recognizes a wide range of ways to express a deadline, including:

• Specific dates (June 15, 2026-06-15)
• Named days (by Monday, before Friday)
• Relative time (end of this week, end of the month, in 3 days)
• Sprint-relative (end of sprint, next sprint) — resolved against your issue’s actual sprint dates when that information is available
• Jira’s native due date field, read directly — if an issue already has a due date set, AMT uses it

Note: Phrases like “ASAP” or “before the demo” do influence how urgently an item is treated, but they don’t resolve to an exact date the way “by Friday” or a specific date does. If you want a concrete deadline to show up, use a named day, a specific date, or set the issue’s due date field directly — don’t rely on phrases like “ASAP” alone.

Note: Day references like “today,” “tomorrow,” “by Friday,” and due dates are evaluated in UTC, not your local timezone. If you’re in a timezone ahead of UTC — like Melbourne (AEST/AEDT, UTC+10 or UTC+11) — this can shift things by up to a day in either direction: a deadline may still show as “1 day away” for part of your local day even after your calendar says it’s due, or it may flip to overdue while you still have hours left in your local day. Using a specific date (e.g. 2026-06-23) doesn’t avoid this — the comparison itself is UTC-based regardless of how the date was set.

Urgency reflects the whole comment, not just keywords

AMT doesn’t just scan for trigger words — it reads the comment in context, alongside the issue’s priority and how many people are affected. A comment that says something is blocking work, affecting production, or affecting multiple people will generally be treated as more urgent than the same request without that context, even without an explicit deadline.

Action classification is driven by what you write, not who you’re asking

Saying “can you approve this?” is likely to produce an Approve classification because the comment text signals a formal sign-off request. AMT doesn’t have access to Jira’s permission model or org-chart data, so it can’t verify whether the person you’re asking actually has approval authority. The classification reflects what you wrote — be specific about what you need (“please sign off on this before we merge” vs. “can you take a look at this?”) so the action type is unambiguous.

Short acknowledgments are recognized instantly

Replies like “lgtm,” “noted,” “done,” or a thumbs-up emoji are recognized immediately as acknowledgments needing no further action — these don’t need any special phrasing to work correctly.