Webhooks/event system for third-party integrations

[nwwatson]

Summary

Prose has an MCP server for AI-driven integrations but no webhooks for traditional third-party integrations (Zapier, IFTTT, custom services). Webhooks are the standard mechanism for event-driven integrations.

Who Has This

• Ghost — Webhooks for post, member, and site events
• WordPress — Webhooks via plugins and REST API
• Buttondown — Webhooks for subscriber and email events

Why This Matters

Webhooks enable integrations without polling: auto-post to social media on publish, sync subscribers to a CRM, trigger CI/CD on content changes, send notifications to Slack/Discord, etc. They're the backbone of modern service integration.

Recommended Implementation

Model

Create a Webhook model:

• url (string) — Target URL
• events (json/array) — Subscribed event types
• secret (string, encrypted) — HMAC signing secret
• active (boolean)
• last_triggered_at, last_response_code

Events

• post.published, post.updated, post.deleted
• post.scheduled, post.unpublished
• subscriber.created, subscriber.deleted
• comment.created, comment.approved

Delivery

• Background job (DeliverWebhookJob) via Solid Queue
• HMAC-SHA256 signature in X-Prose-Signature header
• Retry with exponential backoff (3 attempts)
• Disable webhook after N consecutive failures

Admin UI

• /admin/settings/webhooks — Manage webhook endpoints
• Test button to send a ping event
• Delivery log with response codes

Payload Format

{
  "event": "post.published",
  "timestamp": "2026-02-22T12:00:00Z",
  "data": { /* serialized resource */ }
}

Key Files to Create

• app/models/webhook.rb
• app/services/webhooks/dispatcher.rb — Event dispatch
• app/jobs/deliver_webhook_job.rb
• app/controllers/admin/webhooks_controller.rb
• ActiveSupport::Notifications or ActiveRecord callbacks for event emission