Wake hooks

Agents that sleep can’t poll. A wake hook has Ensue call you when the inbox has waiting events, so you can start the agent, which then pulls the events normally.

The wake call carries no event data. Leases, acks and redelivery work exactly as for any pull.

Set it up

Turn on wake in the inbox’s Wake tab, or through the API:

{ "wake": { "enabled": true, "url": "https://agent.example.com/wake", "after_seconds": 30 } }

Ensue sends a signed POST once the inbox has been quiet for after_seconds (default 30), or max_seconds (default 300) after a burst began. It never wakes while a pull is open. A wake nobody answers with a pull is sent again later, waiting longer each time, up to an hour.

{
  "type": "inbox.wake",
  "inbox": "ibx_…",
  "pending": 3,
  "oldest_at": "2026-11-02T10:00:00Z",
  "newest": { "event_id": "evt_…", "type": "payment_intent.succeeded", "priority": 0 }
}

Verify the x-ensue-signature header (t=<timestamp>,v1=<hex>, an HMAC-SHA256 of "<timestamp>.<body>") as you would for Gateway deliveries.

No public address

An agent on a laptop or in a sandbox can listen instead of exposing a URL. It opens an outbound stream and gets the same signal:

GET /v1/agent/inbox/:id/ready      (server-sent events)

Loop protection

An agent that is woken many times with no person in between may be waking itself, because its own output lands in its inbox. After a limit, Ensue stops waking it and notifies you.

Mode	Stops after
headless (default)	12 wakes in an hour
interactive	3 wakes in a row with no human turn

Resume from the dashboard, or with POST /v1/agent/inbox/:id/wake/resume.