10 KiB
Managed Agents — Webhooks
Anthropic can POST to your HTTPS endpoint when a Managed Agents resource changes state — an alternative to holding an SSE stream or polling. Payloads are thin (event type + resource IDs only); on receipt, fetch the resource for current state. Every delivery is HMAC-signed.
Direction matters. This page covers Anthropic → you notifications about session/vault state. It does not cover third-party → you webhooks that trigger a session (e.g. a GitHub push handler that calls
sessions.create()) — that's ordinary application code on your side with no Anthropic-specific wire format.
Register an endpoint (Console only)
Console → Manage → Webhooks. There is no programmatic endpoint-management API yet. Secret rotation is supported from the same page.
| Field | Constraint |
|---|---|
| URL | HTTPS on port 443, publicly resolvable hostname |
| Event types | Subscribe per data.type — an endpoint receives only the types it is subscribed to |
| Signing secret | whsec_-prefixed, 32 bytes, shown once at creation — store it |
Verify the signature
Every delivery carries the webhook-id, webhook-timestamp, and webhook-signature headers. Use the SDK's client.beta.webhooks.unwrap() — it verifies the signature, rejects payloads more than ~5 minutes old, and returns the parsed event. It reads the whsec_ secret from ANTHROPIC_WEBHOOK_SIGNING_KEY. Pass the headers through untouched; don't hand-roll verification against a single X-Webhook-Signature header, which is not the wire format.
import anthropic
from flask import Flask, request
client = anthropic.Anthropic() # reads ANTHROPIC_WEBHOOK_SIGNING_KEY from env
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route("/webhook", methods=["POST"])
def webhook():
try:
event = client.beta.webhooks.unwrap(
request.get_data(as_text=True),
headers=dict(request.headers),
)
except Exception:
return "invalid signature", 400
if event.id in seen_event_ids: # dedupe retries — id is per-event, not per-delivery
return "", 204
seen_event_ids.add(event.id)
match event.data.type:
case "session.status_idled":
session = client.beta.sessions.retrieve(event.data.id)
notify_user(session)
case "vault_credential.refresh_failed":
alert_oncall(event.data.id)
return "", 204
Pass the raw request body to unwrap() — frameworks that re-serialize JSON (Express .json(), Flask .get_json()) change the bytes and break the MAC. For other languages, look up the beta.webhooks.unwrap binding in the SDK repo (shared/live-sources.md); don't hand-roll verification.
Payload envelope
{
"type": "event",
"id": "whe_9d5c1f7e...",
"created_at": "2026-03-18T14:05:22Z",
"data": {
"type": "session.status_idled",
"id": "session_01XYZ...",
"organization_id": "8a3d2f1e-...",
"workspace_id": "c7b0e4d9-..."
}
}
Switch on data.type, fetch the resource by data.id, return any 2xx to acknowledge. created_at is when the event occurred, not when the delivery was attempted — the webhook-timestamp header is the clock for the attempt (see Delivery behavior).
The top-level id is the same value as the webhook-id header, and it is per event, not per delivery — every retry carries it unchanged. Dedupe on it.
Supported data.type values
data.type |
Fires when |
|---|---|
session.status_scheduled |
Session created and ready to accept events |
session.status_run_started |
Agent execution kicked off (every transition to running) |
session.status_idled |
Agent awaiting input (tool approval, custom tool result, or next message) |
session.status_rescheduled |
A transient error occurred; the session is retrying automatically |
session.status_terminated |
Session ended — on completion or on error, not error-only |
session.thread_created |
Multiagent: coordinator opened a new subagent thread |
session.thread_idled |
Multiagent: a subagent thread is waiting for input |
session.thread_terminated |
A thread ended — child completed its work, or the thread was archived. Child threads only; the primary thread's end surfaces as session.status_terminated |
session.outcome_evaluation_ended |
Outcome grader finished one iteration |
session.updated |
Session properties changed (name, configuration) |
session.deleted |
Session permanently deleted — no object left to fetch; treat the event itself as final |
vault.archived |
Vault was archived |
vault.created |
Vault was created |
vault.deleted |
Vault was deleted — a vault_credential.deleted also fires per underlying credential. No object left to fetch; treat the event itself as final |
vault_credential.archived |
Credential archived, directly or via vault archival |
vault_credential.created |
Vault credential was created |
vault_credential.deleted |
Credential deleted, directly or via vault deletion. No object left to fetch; treat the event itself as final |
vault_credential.refresh_failed |
MCP OAuth vault credential failed to refresh |
agent.created |
Agent created |
agent.updated |
A new agent version was published. Updates that do not create a new version do not fire this. |
agent.archived |
Agent archived |
agent.deleted |
Agent permanently deleted — no object left to fetch; treat the event itself as final |
deployment.created |
Scheduled deployment created |
deployment.updated |
Deployment properties changed (e.g. schedule edited) |
deployment.paused |
Deployment paused — by request, or automatically when a scheduled run fails with a non-recoverable error (archived agent, missing environment). Recoverable failures, including rate limits, do not auto-pause. |
deployment.unpaused |
Deployment unpaused; schedule resumes |
deployment.archived |
Deployment archived — directly, or as a result of agent archival/deletion |
deployment.deleted |
Deployment permanently deleted — no object left to fetch; treat the event itself as final |
deployment_run.started |
A scheduled run started. Manual runs do not emit deployment_run.* events. |
deployment_run.succeeded |
Scheduled run created its session. Same data.id (the run ID) as the run's .started event — fetch the deployment run for its session_id, then subscribe to the session events to follow the work. |
deployment_run.failed |
Scheduled run did not create a session. Same data.id as the run's .started event — fetch the deployment run for error.type / error.message. |
environment.created |
Environment created |
environment.updated |
Environment updated with at least one changed field. A no-op update emits nothing. |
environment.archived |
Environment archived. Re-archiving an already-archived environment emits nothing. |
environment.deleted |
Environment deleted, including delete of an already-archived one. No object left to fetch; treat the event itself as final |
memory_store.created |
Memory store created — by you, or by an Anthropic-operated process that clones one of your stores |
memory_store.archived |
Memory store archived. Re-archiving an already-archived store emits nothing. |
memory_store.deleted |
Memory store deleted, including delete of an already-archived one. Cascades to its memories and versions without per-memory events — this single event is the signal. No object left to fetch; treat it as final |
There is deliberately no
memory_store.updated. Individual memories and memory versions emit no webhook events at all, and neither do an environment's self-hosted work items. If you need per-memory change tracking, poll the memory-versions endpoints (shared/managed-agents-memory.md).
These are webhook
data.typevalues — a separate namespace from SSE event types (session.status_idle,span.outcome_evaluation_end, etc. inshared/managed-agents-events.md). Don't reuse SSE constants in webhook handlers.
Delivery behavior & pitfalls
- Duplicates. An endpoint can receive the same event more than once; every attempt carries the same top-level
event.id(= thewebhook-idheader). Dedupe on it. - Subscription scope. An event reaches only endpoints subscribed to its type at the moment it is emitted. An event emitted while nothing was subscribed is never delivered, and subscribing later does not backfill — subscribe before you need the type.
- No ordering guarantee. Events are not delivered in occurrence order:
session.status_idledmay arrive beforesession.outcome_evaluation_ended, and a.deletedcan arrive before the.archivedfor the same resource. Drive state from the resource you fetch, not from arrival order. - Retries: up to three attempts per endpoint per event, with jittered exponential backoff between 5 and 120 seconds. A response that triggers auto-disable is never retried. After the last attempt fails the event is dropped — not queued, and with no signal that it was lost. Webhooks are not a durable log: if you must observe every transition, reconcile by listing or fetching the resource.
webhook-timestampis re-stamped on every attempt, so retries don't fail the SDK's five-minute freshness check. It times the delivery attempt; use the payload'screated_atfor when the event occurred.- Auto-disable — three triggers, each setting
disabled_reason, all reversible from Console (events emitted while disabled are not replayed):- A
3xxresponse. Redirects are never followed; disables immediately, on the first attempt. Reason:auto-disabled: endpoint URL returned a redirect (3xx). - The URL resolves to a non-public IP at connect time. Disables immediately. Reason:
auto-disabled: endpoint URL resolved to an invalid address. - Continuous failure for a sustained period. Reason:
auto-disabled after sustained delivery failures. The trigger is duration, not a delivery count — a single2xxresets the window, so one flaky event can't disable the endpoint.
- A
- Thin payload is intentional. Don't expect
stop_reason,outcome_evaluations, credential secrets, etc. on the webhook body — fetch the resource.