> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.molesignal.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Silences and groups

> Pause notifications during maintenance or known noise with silence policies, and collapse related incidents into one group by their labels.

A silence pauses notifications and escalation for matching incidents, while the incidents are still
recorded. A semantic group collapses related incidents so that responders handle them once. Neither
changes the rules.

## Silence policies

Open **Alerts → Silence policies**. Each policy shows its state, its window, and what it matches.

| State | Meaning |
| - | - |
| **Silencing now** | Matching incidents are silenced. |
| **Not begun** | The window starts later. |
| **Between hours** | A recurring window is outside its hours now. |
| **Ended** | The window is over. |
| **Off** | The policy is disabled. |

To create a policy:

1. Select **New silence policy** and enter a **Name**. Keep **Enabled** on.
2. Under **Match**, select **Add matcher** for each condition on the labels of incidents, such as
   `service` `=` `checkout`. All matchers must match. `=~` and `!~` take regular expressions. Without
   matchers, the policy matches **Every incident**.
3. Under **Window**, choose the **Window type**:
   * **Fixed range**: a **Start** and an **End**;
   * **Recurring**: a **Timezone**, the **Days of the week**, and the hours from **Hour start** to
     **Hour end** (0 to 24), for example every Saturday from 2 to 6.
4. Under **Comment**, enter the **Reason**, then select **Create silence**.

Silences match the labels that incidents carry: the labels of the rule, and the values of the groups of
a [split rule](https://docs.molesignal.com/en-US/alerting/rules.md#split-a-rule-by-columns). Name the affected service and the end
time in every planned silence, and let it end by itself rather than deleting it later.

> [!WARNING]
>
> A silence hides notifications; it does not prove that the service has recovered. Check the incident
> list when the window ends.

### Silence one incident

**Silence** on an incident pauses notifications and escalation for that incident only, for **1 hour**,
**4 hours**, **24 hours**, or **7 days**, with an optional **Reason**. It does not disable the rule or
silence other incidents of the same service. The silence appears in **Silence policies**, where it can be
changed or removed early.

Creating, changing, and removing silences requires `alerts.silence`.

## Semantic groups

Open **Alerts → Groups**. A semantic group collapses incidents that share label values, like the
`group_by` of Alertmanager. Acknowledging or resolving a group through the API does the same to every
incident in it; see [Groups of incidents](https://docs.molesignal.com/en-US/alerting/incidents.md#groups-of-incidents).

1. Select **New group** and enter a **Name**, such as `critical-by-service`. Keep **Enabled** on.
2. Under **Matchers**, add the conditions an incident must meet, for example `severity` = `critical`.
   All must match; with none, the group applies to every incident.
3. Under **Group by**, enter the **Group-by labels**, comma-separated, such as `service, region`.
   Incidents with the same values of these labels collapse into one group.
4. Select **Create group**.

A disabled group is skipped. Deleting a group keeps the incidents and removes only the grouping.

**Import** creates groups from JSON: an array of groups, or an object with a `groups` array.

```json theme={null}
[
  {
    "name": "crit-by-service",
    "enabled": true,
    "matchers": [{ "label": "severity", "op": "eq", "value": "critical" }],
    "group_by": ["service"]
  }
]
```

Managing groups requires `alerts.manage`.


This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.