What is a webhook?
A webhook reverses the usual direction. Rather than your script polling an API every minute to ask whether anything changed, the service calls your URL the moment it does.
What matters here
- Fires on an event, not on a schedule
- Sends a small payload to a URL you control
- Needs a way to verify the sender
- Retries when your endpoint is down
- Cheaper than constant polling
Push versus pull
An API is pull: you ask. A webhook is push: it tells you. For anything that should react quickly, push is simpler and lighter, because nothing runs while nothing happens.
The hard parts
Delivery is not guaranteed, ordering is not guaranteed, and the same event may arrive twice. A receiver has to be idempotent and tolerate retries, which is more engineering than the one line description suggests.
Verifying a sender
An open URL will receive traffic from anyone who finds it. Signature verification with a shared secret is the minimum, and a shared secret in a query string is not verification.
Frequently asked questions
Keep reading
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- Prysm Note for exam revisionA revision plan that fits in one view: dated review tasks, topic notes, and a countdown to the exam instead of a vague sense of panic.
- Prysm Note for remote workRemote work runs on written context. A short daily note, a visible task list and async updates replace most of what an office provides by accident.
Turn talk into a plan
Capture a thought in plain language and let Prysm Note shape it into tasks and a timeline.
Disclaimer
This page is general information, not professional, legal, financial or medical advice. It describes common ways of working and how Prysm Note approaches them. Software changes over time, so details may differ from what you see in the product. Any product, company or brand names that appear are the property of their respective owners and are used only for identification. We do not claim any endorsement or affiliation. Where we compare approaches, we aim to describe each one honestly, including where a different approach may suit you better. Try the tools that matter to you and judge for yourself.