Linear’s duplicate issue cannot be a terminal customer state

Primary records: Linear April 23, 2026 changelog fixes Intercom conversations reopening just because a linked issue is marked duplicate; May 21, 2026 changelog, “Issue duplicates” describes the dedicated duplicate status and moving customer requests, Slack threads and attachments to the canonical issue. When the canonical issue is completed, synced Slack threads get an outcome update and linked customer tickets in Intercom or Zendesk reopen for follow-up. The April 10 first-person account says the CX team then follows up with each customer.

Interpretation and limits. These product records describe a specific state-machine correction: suppress premature ‘follow up’ when the duplicate is canceled, while preserving each requester’s path to later follow-up on the original. Since a teammate, Triage Intelligence or an agent can mark a duplicate, bookkeeping is part of bounded agent authority. The May documentation asserts new behavior but does not present an original incident ticket, linked code/PR, audit of previously orphaned requesters, customer acceptance or human minutes. Do not infer that all duplicate requests got replies or that an automated completed issue meant customer resolution. The April and May changes are two states of the same product, not a linked single bug-fix artifact. See Linear’s operating account and closure test.