Sentry Webhooks Explained: What They Are And How To Use Them
Toggle HMAC verification and simulate a spoofed payload to see what actually stops it.
The default Sentry email alert is the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Underneath it sits a webhook system that can push full, structured data about every issue to any endpoint you control, which is what makes automated triage, custom routing, and integrations like Tailon possible in the first place.
What A Sentry Webhook Actually Sends You
When an issue is created or changes state, Sentry sends a JSON payload to a URL you configure, containing the event data, the stack trace, tags, the affected project, and metadata about the issue itself. It is the same information you would see in the Sentry UI, just delivered automatically instead of requiring someone to go look.
Internal Integrations Versus Public Integrations
For a single project or organization, an internal integration is the simplest way in: created inside your own Sentry settings, it gives you a webhook URL and a client secret without needing to publish anything or go through Sentry's app review. Public integrations exist for tools meant to be installed by other organizations, which is more setup than most teams actually need.
Verifying That A Webhook Really Came From Sentry
Every webhook request carries a signature header, computed as an HMAC of the raw request body using your client secret. Recomputing that signature on your end and comparing it before trusting the payload is not optional, it is the only thing stopping anyone who finds your webhook URL from sending you fake incidents.
What You Can Build On Top Of A Sentry Webhook
Once you can receive and verify a webhook, the options open up: route different projects to different Slack channels, log every issue into your own database, trigger a rollback on a specific error signature, or, as Tailon does, run every incoming issue through an AI triage step before deciding whether it is worth a human's attention.
If you already have a Sentry project and want the triage step without building any of this yourself, that is exactly what Tailon does out of the box.
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