Android’s notification management system is already quite advanced and flexible, but it might be getting some additional smarts pretty soon. Android currently has features like Notification Channels, Notification Cooldown, Modes and Notification Organizer. Now Google is apparently working on something called Notification Rules.
Notification Rules were spotted in Android 17 Beta 3. According to the strings unearthed by Android Authority, rules can be based on Apps or People. The available actions when a given rule matches its criteria are: Silence, Block, Silence and Bundle, Highlights, Highlight & Alert. Some of these are definitely more self-explanatory than others. It seems that there will be a new way of highlighting or prioritizing certain notifications, perhaps in some visual way. Ultimately, the new Notification Rules feature might allow you to say not to get a notification for calls from a certain contact or perhaps get a priority notification for messages from certain contacts.
It is perhaps also interesting to note that traces of Notification Rules have been spotted in some Samsung One UI 9 builds as well, meaning that this will likely not be a Pixel-exclusive feature.