Do I need an account to use ntfy with an AI agent?

No. ntfy topics need no account or bot token. You choose a topic name, subscribe to it in the app, and message the agent there.

Is an ntfy topic private?

Only if the name is unguessable. Anyone who knows a topic name can read and publish to it, so treat the topic like a password and choose a long random one, or self-host ntfy.

Why do my agent scheduled messages never arrive on ntfy?

Set a home channel. Without it, messages the agent sends on its own — scheduled tasks, reminders, alerts — have no destination.

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Guide

Connect ntfy to Your AI Agent

ntfy is the lowest-friction way to reach your agent from a phone. No account, no bot token, no developer console — you pick a topic name and you are done. That simplicity is also the thing you have to be careful about.

Read the Identity Model First

On ntfy there are no user accounts by default. A topic is just a name, and anyone who knows that name can read what is published to it and publish to it themselves. There is no password step and nothing stopping a guess.

For an AI agent that means the topic name is effectively the credential. If you pick something like hermes or alerts, expect strangers to find it. Pick something long and unguessable, the way you would a password:

hermes-7f3a91c4d8e2-mybot

Treat it as a secret. Do not paste it in a screenshot, an issue, or a public chat. If it leaks, change it — that is the whole recovery procedure.

Set It Up

Run the guided setup from your instance's Web Terminal and pick ntfy:

hermes gateway setup

Or configure it directly:

NTFY_TOPIC=hermes-7f3a91c4d8e2-mybot
NTFY_ALLOWED_USERS=hermes-7f3a91c4d8e2-mybot
NTFY_HOME_CHANNEL=hermes-7f3a91c4d8e2-mybot

NTFY_HOME_CHANNEL is worth setting. It is where the agent sends things nobody asked for in the moment — scheduled task output, reminders, alerts. Without it, those messages have no destination.

Restart the gateway so the settings load.

Talk to It From Your Phone

Install the ntfy app on your phone, or open the web app.
Subscribe to your topic name.
Send a message to the topic and wait for the agent to reply in the same thread.

That is the whole flow. No pairing code, no bot to create, and it works on a phone, a desktop or a browser tab.

When to Use It

ntfy shines for a private, personal agent you want to reach quickly, and for anything push-shaped — a scheduled job that reports each morning, a long task that tells you when it is done. It is a poor fit for anything with several users or anything confidential, because access control is just knowledge of the topic name. For those, use a platform with real accounts such as Matrix or Telegram.

Self-Hosting

If the shared public server is not acceptable for your data, ntfy can be self-hosted and pointed at your own server instead. Same setup, different base URL — and it removes the public-topic exposure entirely.

Troubleshooting

Messages appear but the agent never answers. Check the allowed-users setting matches the topic you are actually publishing to.
Scheduled output never arrives. The home channel is not set.
Strangers are messaging your agent. Someone guessed or saw the topic. Change it to something longer and update both the app and the config.
Nothing arrives on the phone at all. Check the app is subscribed to the exact topic string, including case.

Need a Hand?

Contact support from your dashboard and we will set it up. Do not send us the topic name in chat — treat it like a password and we will tell you where to put it.