Source: How WebHooks Work (System Design)

Summary

The video explains the foundational mechanics of webhooks (HTTP callbacks). Our research expanded this into production-grade patterns for building reliable, secure, and idempotent webhook consumers.

Key Technical Takeaways

  • Acknowledgment vs. Processing: Always acknowledge (200 OK) as fast as possible after persistence. Move logic to a background worker.
  • Deduplication: Use persistent idempotency keys to handle “at-least-once” delivery duplicates.
  • Security: Mandatory HMAC signature verification and replay protection via timestamps.
  • Failure Handling: Exponential backoff with jitter and Dead Letter Queues (DLQ) for unprocessable events.

Synthesized into: Webhooks