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Webhook

A webhook is a mechanism by which one web service automatically notifies another when an event occurs, by sending an HTTP call to a predefined URL. It reverses the logic of traditional APIs: instead of repeatedly asking whether anything new happened (polling), the system receives the news the moment it occurs. It is the don't call us, we'll call you principle applied to the web.

Definition

How it works

Whoever wants to be notified registers a URL with the source service. When the event happens, a completed payment, an uploaded file, a finished build, the service sends an HTTP POST request to that URL with the event data as JSON. The receiver verifies a signature to authenticate the sender and processes the payload. On failure, the sender retries delivery at increasing intervals.

Applications

In AI, webhooks connect models to the real world: a platform signals that a fine-tuning job has finished, an agent receives the result of a long generation task, an automation tool like Zapier or n8n triggers a chain of AI actions upon receiving an event. Outside AI they power payment notifications (Stripe), chat integrations (Slack) and development pipelines (GitHub).

History & etymology

The term was coined by programmer Jeff Lindsay in 2007, who proposed web hooks in a blog post as an evolution of the hook concept, the extension points through which programs let others extend their behavior. The idea spread through the 2010s until it became the de facto standard for integrations between cloud services.

How it's used in Grace

Grace's professional scenarios on automation ask you to design integrations between AI and business tools: knowing what a webhook is lets you write precise prompts for these flows. The AI Jobs board shows how much companies look for people who can orchestrate these connections.

Related terms

• API
• Cron Job
• Pub/Sub
• Function Calling
• AI Workflow

More in AI Fundamentals

• LLM (Large Language Model)
• Token
• Context Window
• Temperature
• AI Hallucination
• Fine-tuning
• RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)
• Embedding

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