Recipes · Builders

PostHog

Product signals ready when you ask

Each important PostHog event emails your Instinct bot so registrations, upgrades, and product moments are citeable in chat.

Recommended: Per-event email (Mailgun or Workflows) ~10 min setup

Outcome

Instinct can answer "Did anyone register today?", "What just upgraded?", or "Summarize the product events you got this week?" from the event emails you route over. PostHog stays the analytics source of truth. Instinct becomes the conversational side channel for the events you choose.

What gets sent

  • Event name (example: user_registered, subscription_started)
  • Timestamp and distinct id when you include them
  • A short set of key properties you pick (plan, source, country, feature flag, and so on)
  • Optional link back to the person or event in PostHog
  • Not required: full event firehoses, session recordings, or every $pageview

How to send

Goal: one email lands in your bot today.

Copy your bot address from Instinct → Settings (your-bot@instinct.com).

Open Instinct Settings Opens in a new tab

Paste the address from Instinct → Settings.

On Instinct: Copy your bot address from Settings

In PostHog open Data pipeline → Destinations → + Create and choose Mailgun.

Open PostHog data pipelines Opens in a new tab

On PostHog: Open Data pipeline, Destinations, Create, Mailgun

Add Mailgun domain, API key, and region. Enable the destination.

On PostHog: Add Mailgun domain, API key, region; enable

Set the email template To to your Instinct bot address (literal). Do not use {person.properties.email} unless you mean to email the end user.

On PostHog: Set email To to your Instinct bot address

Subject example: PostHog: {event.event}. Body: event name, timestamp, distinct id, and 3 to 5 properties you will ask about later.

On PostHog: Set subject and body with event name + key properties

Filter to high-signal events only (registrations, checkouts, upgrades, feature activations). Skip noisy defaults like bare $pageview.

On PostHog: Filter to high-signal events only

Send a test event and confirm Instinct received the mail.

On Instinct: Confirm the test event mail arrived
Subject: PostHog: {event.event} Event: {event.event} When: {event.timestamp} Distinct id: {event.distinct_id} Properties: - plan: {event.properties.plan} - source: {event.properties.source}
Other ways · Insight Alerts (~2 min)

Use when you care about thresholds (signups over 100/day, conversion drop) more than each event.

Copy your bot address from Instinct → Settings.

Open the insight → Actions → Alerts → New alert.

Set series, threshold, and check interval.

Add an email recipient with your Instinct bot address.

Create the alert and confirm Instinct gets a mail when it fires.

Other ways · Forward personal PostHog mail (weaker)

Inbox-filter PostHog alert mail to your personal address and forward to the bot. Prefer per-event email or Insight Alerts so Instinct is a direct recipient.

Tips & gotchas

  • Filter hard: Per-event email can flood the bot. Start with one or two registration-class events.
  • To field: Always the Instinct bot for this recipe, not the customer's email.
  • PII: Only include properties you are fine storing in Instinct. Drop emails, phone numbers, and free-text PII unless needed.
  • Mailgun cost / auth: Path B Option 1 needs a Mailgun account. Workflows Email needs the PostHog email channel set up.
  • Not a pager: Keep Slack or PagerDuty for on-call. Instinct is for asking later in plain language.
  • Alerts still useful: Keep Insight Alerts for metric breaches; use per-event email for something-registered style moments.

Try asking Instinct…

After a mail or two lands, try:

Did anyone register today?

Summarize the PostHog events you got this week.

What was the last upgrade or checkout event you saw?

Which product signals came in since yesterday?