Missing review requests? It's probably not you.

"My teammate says she requested my review three days ago." If that sentence feels familiar, you're not careless — the default GitHub notification pipeline has several silent failure points. Here are the ones worth checking, in order.

1. Watch vs. Participating

GitHub's default filter is "Participating and @mentions". If nobody explicitly mentioned you, a review request can hide behind it. Check github.com/notifications → filter settings.

2. Email landed nowhere useful

Search your mail for [GitHub]. If nothing shows up, check GitHub Settings → Notifications and confirm your primary address — corporate SSO often routes to an alias you never read.

3. Browser badge amnesia

The tab-badge resets whenever the tab closes or the browser restarts before you looked. That's not a bug you can fix — it's the design.

4. macOS Focus modes silently eating alerts

System Settings → Notifications: confirm your GitHub-related app isn't excluded by a Focus profile that was switched on weeks ago and forgotten.

5–7. Or skip the pipeline entirely

Generate a personal access token (guide).
Point DevNotify at it — it queries GitHub directly, so there is no email hop, no badge reset, no Focus dependency for the count itself.
The menu-bar number reflects reality within minutes. What it shows is what exists.

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