novuhq/novu

What it does

Novu is an open-source communication layer that sits between an application or an agent and the channels users actually read. Instead of integrating and maintaining a separate provider for inbox, email, SMS, push and chat, you send a single API call and let Novu handle delivery.

Two workloads share the same foundation—one API and a unified conversation model:

• Product notifications: delivery across In-App/Inbox, Email, SMS, Push and Chat, with a workflow engine that supports branching and per-channel conditions, a digest engine for batching, a no-code email editor, and embeddable <Inbox /> and preferences components.
• Agent Communication Infrastructure (ACI): connects an agent you already built to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, email and an in-app inbox. It receives inbound messages, normalizes them into one message shape, routes them to your agent, and sends replies back out, so you do not write a webhook handler per platform.

The provider layer is broad: the repository ships adapters for 20 email providers, 37 SMS providers, 8 push providers and 13 chat providers, each under packages/providers/src/lib/. Product teams adding a notification center and teams exposing an existing agent to chat channels are the main audiences.

Quick start

The README's getting-started path is account-first: create a free account from the Novu dashboard and follow the dashboard instructions. This is the shortest route for product notifications and does not require running the backend yourself.

To try ACI, the README offers a CLI that wires an existing Claude Managed Agent into Slack, Telegram or Email:

npx novu@latest connect

This is presented as a demonstration of the ACI layer through Novu Connect rather than a complete agent-building tutorial. For building against the notification platform in a React app, the React quickstart covers adding the real-time inbox component via @novu/react.

Self-hosting is supported and documented separately in the local run guide; the README does not include those steps, so treat them as a distinct setup path that needs its own environment prerequisites.

Constraints and licensing

• The React inbox component is the documented client path; the README lists React Native, Vue and Angular as coming soon.
• The repository is Open Core. The core is MIT-licensed, but the root enterprise folder and its subfolders are covered by a commercial license, so check the license before reusing enterprise code.
• ACI does not build the agent. Your agent logic stays with Claude Managed Agents, AI SDK, LangGraph or a custom stack; Novu handles channel plumbing.
• Channel credentials are the developer's responsibility. A maintainer confirmed in a 2022 discussion that Slack/Teams OAuth setup was not provided at the time, though it was listed as roadmap work.

HotRepo's take

Novu's strongest signal is a December 2022 Hacker News thread titled "Service for managing multi-channel notifications with a single API", which reached 160 points and 24 comments and drew exactly the question that still defines adoption: is anyone running this in production at scale? Two commenters asked for production experience reports and received no direct answer in the sampled replies, so the single-API value proposition was accepted while scale evidence was not demonstrated in that thread. A later snapshot on the TypeScript daily list (2026-11-06) records 22 stars added for the day at position 14, which is a modest single-day reading rather than a trend. The 2026 README has broadened the pitch from notification delivery to agent communication channels, a scope shift worth tracking if you are evaluating it as infrastructure.