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Decision brief

Linear Review: Planning Your Team Keeps Current, and Issues Your Agents Can Pick Up

Choose Linear when engineers and coding agents work from the tracker, and price cross-team reporting before leaders depend on it.

Reading time
5 min read
Sources
28 cited
In this piece
Linear+41 Positive

GILD verdict

Choose Linear when the engineers and agents doing the work are the tracker's main users, and settle how leaders will report across teams before a company-wide move.

The workflow
Software teams that triage incoming work and plan in cycles and projects. They link branches and pull requests so issue status moves on its own, and assign scoped issues to coding agents or Linear's coding sessions.57101112
The decisive evidence
  • DocumentedOnce GitHub or GitLab is connected, pull request events move issue status. Installed agents take issues by assignment or mention and are not billable seats.512
  • DocumentedInsights needs the Business plan and cross-team Dashboards need Enterprise. Linear chose not to pursue Jira's issue types, components, required fields, or constraints; its form templates require fields only when an issue is filed.14151721
  • DocumentedCoding sessions bill model tokens and sandbox time from one prepaid workspace balance that anyone with access can draw on, up to the limits an admin sets.34
  • GILD analysisPublic accounts favor Linear for speed and Git-linked status, and they favor Jira where departments need custom workflows, fields, approvals, and portfolio reporting. Galliot's co-founder describes a successful move from Jira to Linear for agency teams. Accounts from larger organizations keep Jira because each team runs a different process. Run both on the same two teams for one cycle, and compare accepted agent changes, review time, reporting work, and total license plus AI spend before you cut over.
The tradeoff
Teams trade configurability for speed. They get a board engineers keep current and agents can read, and they give up per-team process rules.11517
What would change the call
The call changes if leaders must report across many teams from the tracker without paying for Enterprise, or if several departments need different required fields and approvals in one system.117

Linear

Team Workspace by Linear

+41 Positive
Product page

Fit and limits

Who it fits

  • Engineers work in GitHub or GitLab and you want branch and pull request events to move issue status without manual updates.
  • Teams want to assign issues to Cursor, Codex, Devin, or GitHub Copilot, or have Linear Agent run Claude Code or Codex in a coding session, from the same issue.
  • Product, design, and support file work into a team's Triage inbox from Slack, support tools, or Sentry, and someone triages it daily.
  • Leaders want projects and initiatives to show progress across teams without a separate status report.

Where it falls short

  • One Business-plan team on r/Linear found that saved views and Insights fell short of dashboards, and it planned to upgrade to Enterprise for them.
  • Jira's issue types, components, required fields, and constraints do not sync, and Jira Sync does not create issues whose Jira workflow demands required fields.
  • Anyone with access to coding sessions or Loops can spend the workspace's AI credits. Workspace, user, and loop limits cap that spend only after an admin sets them.
  • The data region is chosen at workspace creation, and changing it is not self-serve. Account data, API keys, and usage analytics stay in the US whichever region you pick.
  • Linear's agent APIs are in active development and may change before general availability, so custom agents need upkeep.

Implementation reality

  1. Pick the plan by feature

    Basic, US$10 per user per month billed yearly or US$12 monthly, covers 5 teams, unlimited issues, and admin roles. Business, US$16 or US$18, adds unlimited teams, sub-teams, private teams and guests, Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence, Insights, Asks, and Releases for up to 15 pipelines. Enterprise adds SAML, SCIM, the audit log, Dashboards, and a HIPAA BAA, and is billed yearly only.

  2. Set Triage and pull request automation first

    Turn on Triage per team so issues from integrations and other teams land in an inbox, with a rotating owner. Connect GitHub, GitLab, or Cursor Origin and copy branch names from issues, so opening, reviewing, and merging a pull request moves the issue through its statuses.

  3. Turn on agents with limits

    Admins install each agent for chosen teams, write workspace and team guidance that names repositories and review rules, and set spend limits for coding sessions and Loops in Usage and limits. A security toggle stops guests from interacting with agents. Agents cannot sign in, reach admin functions, or manage users. Staff review before you widen delegation. Linear reports its own agent merged almost 700 pull requests in one month. Its Ramp story says Inspect writes three of every four pull requests Ramp merges, which moved Ramp's bottleneck to review.

  4. Decide what AI may read

    Code Intelligence reads only repositories connected through the GitHub integration and only those a member can access, unless an admin extends access to everyone. The MCP server has a read-only endpoint, and Okta customers can enforce enterprise-managed authorization for MCP clients. Linear's DPA lists its AI subprocessors.

What to measure in your pilot

  • Linear's usage report counts opened pull requests only. For four weeks, log coding session spend against pull requests merged without a human follow-up commit, and widen delegation when more than half merge clean.
  • Linear advises adding Triage Intelligence guidance once wrong suggestions recur, so log accepted, declined, and overridden suggestions across your 10 busiest teams for four weeks; keep auto-apply off below 70% routing acceptance.
  • Linear's own team ran 1,055 Code Intelligence queries in February; count engineering clarification comments per product spec for six weeks before and after enabling it, and keep it optional without a drop.

Sources

Official documentation
27
Public source
1
  1. Linear pricingOfficial documentationlinear.app
  2. Linear docs: Billing and plansOfficial documentationlinear.app
  3. Linear docs: AI creditsOfficial documentationlinear.app
  4. Linear docs: Usage and limitsOfficial documentationlinear.app
  5. Linear docs: AI agentsOfficial documentationlinear.app
  6. Linear docs: Linear AgentOfficial documentationlinear.app
  7. Linear docs: Coding sessionsOfficial documentationlinear.app
  8. Linear docs: Triage IntelligenceOfficial documentationlinear.app
  9. Linear docs: Code IntelligenceOfficial documentationlinear.app
  10. Linear docs: TriageOfficial documentationlinear.app
  11. Linear docs: CyclesOfficial documentationlinear.app
  12. Linear docs: GitHubOfficial documentationlinear.app
  13. Linear changelog: Slack and GitHub loopsOfficial documentationlinear.app
  14. Linear docs: InsightsOfficial documentationlinear.app
  15. Linear docs: DashboardsOfficial documentationlinear.app
  16. Linear docs: MCP serverOfficial documentationlinear.app
  17. Linear docs: JiraOfficial documentationlinear.app
  18. Linear docs: SecurityOfficial documentationlinear.app
  19. Linear Data Processing Agreement (subprocessors)Official documentationlinear.app
  20. Linear Developers: Agents, getting startedOfficial documentationlinear.app
  21. Linear docs: Issue templatesOfficial documentationlinear.app
  22. Linear: Rebuilding Linear's delta sync read pathOfficial documentationlinear.app
  23. Linear: How teams build, AI usage patterns in software teams (2026)Official documentationlinear.app
  24. Linear: Now Linear writes the code, tooOfficial documentationlinear.app
  25. Linear customer story: Ramp's Inspect agent (Aug 31, 2026)Official documentationlinear.app
  26. Linear: How we built Triage IntelligenceOfficial documentationlinear.app
  27. Linear: Code Intelligence for Linear AgentOfficial documentationlinear.app
  28. Capital-Barnacle2255 on Reddit r/Linear: Views do not replace dashboards on the Business plan (Jan 5, 2026)Public sourcereddit.com

Keep reading

  1. Buyer guideLinear Team Setup Playbook: Triage, Cycles, and Pull Request AutomationSeven setup steps for a company bringing Linear to its first teams, or one whose leaders still ask engineers for status the tracker should already show.
  2. Buyer guideDelegating Linear Issues to Coding AgentsRoute each issue to an agent, write a usable brief, set access and AI credit limits, and require a human review before any merge.
  3. Buyer guideJira to Linear Migration ChecklistMap the Jira data that moves, the process rules Linear leaves out, the Jira Sync pilot, and the cutover.
Read the research