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In Automa, webhooks are used to notify your bot about various events, such as task creation, proposal updates, and more. This allows your bot to respond to changes in real-time. Automa’s webhooks follow the Standard Webhooks specification, which means they are designed to be secure and reliable. Therefore, all the events use the following payload structure:
  • id: Unique identifier for the webhook event.
  • type: The type of event (e.g., task.created, proposal.accepted).
  • timestamp: The time when the event occurred, in ISO 8601 format.
  • data: The event-specific data, which varies based on the event type.
{
  "id": "whmsg_task_created_1234",
  "type": "task.created",
  "timestamp": "2025-07-28T04:58:00.000Z",
  "data": {
    /* task, repo, org, items */
  }
}
The events are also accompanied by the following headers:
  • webhook-id: the same as payload id
  • webhook-timestamp: UNIX timestamp of when the event occurred (seconds since epoch)
  • webhook-signature: the signature(s) of the webhook used to verify the payload
  • x-automa-server-host: the URL of the Automa server that sent the webhook

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Verifying signatures

To ensure the integrity and origin of webhooks, Automa signs each one using HMAC-SHA256. The signature is passed in the webhook-signature header, which includes a version identifier and the signature in base64 format, separated by a comma (e.g., v1,d82n...). The signature is generated using your bot’s webhook secret (excluding the atma_whsec_ prefix). The content that is signed is a string made by concatenating the webhook ID, the timestamp in unix format, and the raw request body, joined by periods. 
{id}.{timestamp}.{body}
We strongly recommend using our Bot SDKs, which provide a helper function to verify the signature for you.

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Retries

When a webhook event is sent, Automa ensures that it is delivered successfully. If a delivery fails due to a non-2xx response or a network issue, Automa will retry. The retry policy uses an exponential backoff strategy, with an initial delay of 10 minutes and a maximum of 5 attempts. The delay doubles with each subsequent retry. To prevent side effects from repeated deliveries:
  • Use the webhook id to detect and discard duplicate requests.
  • Ensure your webhook handler is idempotent (safe to run multiple times).
  • Use locking to protect shared resources from race conditions.
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