Webhook

General definition

A webhook inverts the usual request-response model: instead of your application asking “did anything happen?” on a schedule (polling), the external system asks your application “here is what just happened” the moment it does. You register a URL endpoint, the external system stores it, and every matching event triggers an HTTP POST to that URL carrying a JSON (or XML) payload describing the event.

• Low latency: events arrive within milliseconds of occurring rather than waiting for the next poll cycle
• Efficient: no wasted requests when nothing has changed
• At-least-once delivery: most webhook systems retry on failure, so consumers must handle duplicates (see idempotency)
• Typically secured via a shared secret or HMAC signature in the request headers

Common uses in messaging and chat platforms include notifying your server when a new message arrives in a channel, when a user joins or leaves a room, when a file upload completes or when an AI agent finishes processing a request. Your server consumes the event, updates its own database, triggers a downstream action, and responds with HTTP 200 to acknowledge receipt.

Webhook endpoints must be publicly reachable over HTTPS. During local development, tools like ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnels expose a local port to the internet for testing. Scaling a webhook consumer correctly requires an async queue behind the endpoint so the HTTP handler returns fast and deferred work happens in a background worker.

In the Ethora ecosystem

Ethora exposes webhook endpoints for key platform events: new messages, user registrations, app creations and read receipts. These hooks are the primary integration path for connecting Ethora to external CRMs, analytics pipelines, compliance logging systems or custom notification services.

When building AI-agent workflows on the AI SDK, webhooks trigger the agent pipeline: an incoming message fires a hook to your server, the server calls your LLM, and the response is posted back to the channel via the REST API. On self-hosted deployments, webhook routing stays within your own network perimeter, which matters for regulated industries where outbound HTTP traffic is audited.