Webhooks for events.
The design for Orbyt Intelligence events: signed, retried deliveries. Planned, not shipped.
Planned, not shipped.
Everything below is the design we intend to build. No Orbyt Intelligence webhook event is sent today, the CLI has no webhooks command, and the example payloads, signatures and tunnel output are illustrations, not captured output. The webhooks that do exist belong to the Orbyt Jobs API.
Why webhooks.
Webhooks deliver Orbyt Intelligence events to your server in near-real-time. Instead of polling the API for fresh data on a schedule, your application subscribes to the events you care about and reacts when they fire. The result is fresher data with less load on both sides.
The three most common use cases. Cache invalidation: when data.refreshed fires, your application invalidates its cached comp bands so the next request hits the fresh dataset. Alerting: when velocity.changed fires for a critical role, your comp team gets a Slack notification. Auditing: when lineage.updated fires, your compliance team logs the new provenance trail.
The webhook surface is designed to feel like Stripe's. Signature format is compatible (HMAC-SHA256 with a timestamp prefix). Event types follow a stable noun.verb naming. Idempotency keys appear on every delivery. Retry policy is exponential backoff with a 24-hour terminal window. Deliveries persist in the dashboard for 30 days so you can replay them if your endpoint was down.
Event catalog.
data.refreshedFires when a methodology version increments and one or more engines republish data. Payload includes the engines updated and the new methodology version.
data.correctedFires when a previously-published data point is corrected (typically after a methodology fix or source-data restatement). Payload includes the old value, new value, and the reason.
data.retractedFires when a data point is retracted (rare: only when the underlying source data is found to be unreliable). The data point becomes unreachable; lookups return 410 Gone.
velocity.changedFires when a role × city combination crosses a velocity threshold (e.g., enters Hot or exits Hot). Payload includes the role, the city, the four velocity metrics, and the new + previous status.
lineage.updatedFires when a data point's provenance trail changes: for example, when a new source is added to the reconciliation set. Useful for compliance teams that audit citations.
Signature verification.
Every webhook delivery carries an Orbyt-Signature header. The signature is computed as:
Verify by computing the HMAC on your side and comparing to the header. Reject deliveries older than 5 minutes: Stripe-compatible defense against replay attacks.
Retry policy and delivery guarantees.
If your endpoint returns anything other than a 2xx response, we retry with exponential backoff. The schedule is fixed and visible:
Your endpoint should be idempotent: every delivery carries an Orbyt-Idempotency-Key header. Record the key in a dedupe table and short-circuit subsequent deliveries with the same key. The same key is repeated across every retry attempt for the same event, so dedup is straightforward.
Reasonable handler shape: return 2xx as soon as you have durably recorded the event (database write, queue enqueue). Do not block on downstream processing: that adds latency and increases your retry surface. Process asynchronously after the 2xx.
Event versioning.
Each event payload includes an event_version field. As of October 2026 every event type ships at version 1. New fields are added in a backwards-compatible way without bumping the version. Breaking changes (extremely rare) increment the version and the customer must opt-in via dashboard or API to migrate. The previous version continues to fire for at least 6 months after a successor version ships.
Local development with CLI tunneling.
Webhook delivery and the CLI tunnel are planned, not shipped. No Intelligence webhook event is sent today. The planned tunnel would forward deliveries to your local server and preserve signature headers. Use the REST API to request current data.
See the CLI page for installation and full command reference.
Pricing and access.
Webhook subscriptions are planned for the Ultra tier. No Orbyt Intelligence webhook event exists today. The design is up to 50 webhook endpoints per account, unlimited deliveries within the rate plan, and 30-day retention of failed deliveries for replay. Full pricing at /orbyt-intelligence/pricing.
See also.
Last updated October 2026. Webhooks v1 stable. Signature format compatible with Stripe's pattern. 24-hour retry window with 30-day failed-delivery retention.