Signals

A signal is a structured finding: something worth knowing, with the evidence behind it and a suggested action. Signals are the raw material of the self-improving loop. Everything self-driving does starts from a signal.

What's in a signal

A signal isn't only an alert. It carries:

• The finding – what's happening, stated concretely.
• The evidence – the data that backs it up.
• A suggested action – what could be done about it.

That structure is what lets the rest of the loop reason about a signal, group it with related ones, and act on it.

Where signals come from

Signals come from two kinds of source, which you can turn on independently:

• Signal sources are built-in pipelines that watch one stream continuously: error tracking, session replay, and health checks inside PostHog, plus external tools like Zendesk, GitHub Issues, and Linear.
• Scouts are agents that run on a schedule and look across your product data more holistically.

Both feed signals into the same pipeline. A single problem usually shows up as several signals from several sources, so the loop deduplicates and groups them, and you act on the problem, not the noise.

From signals to reports

On their own, signals are just a stream of findings. Grouped into a report, they become a single thing you can act on.

Next step

See how signals become reports.