How Honk works
Your shop, your forms, your home and your servers tell Honk what happened. Honk keeps every message, folds repeats together, pushes only what can’t wait, and leaves the rest in an inbox you can read later.
From request to push
- Request Your code posts JSON to
/v1/messageswith a project’s ingestion key. - Stored Honk saves it to disk, then answers
202. A retry with the sameIdempotency-Keygets the same id back, not a second message. - Grouped It joins the group for its project, environment, source, channel and
group_key. - Routed For each person, Honk decides: push it now, save it for the digest, or just keep it in the inbox.
- Sent Pushes go out through Apple’s push service and Web Push. Everything stays searchable in the inbox.
202 means Honk has the message, not that anyone has seen it. That’s why the apps never say “delivered”: Apple and the browser push services only confirm that they accepted a notification.
Groups and episodes
A group collects the events that are about the same thing. Two events belong to the same group when they come from the same project, environment, source and channel and share a group_key. Without a group_key, Honk compares the exact title and message, so only identical events fold together.
An episode is one run of a problem within a group. The first event opens it, and it ends one of two ways: the source reports a recovery for the same group_key, or nothing arrives for a while (24 hours by default) and the episode goes inactive. Inactive doesn’t mean fixed, so the next event opens a new episode and pushes again.
Mark handled is a note for yourself that you’ve dealt with an episode. It doesn’t mean the problem is fixed, and a new episode will ask for your attention again.
Choosing a group key
db/backup- one job: every failure of the nightly backup folds into one group
requests/4812- one customer request per group, so two customers never fold into one push
disk/app-01/var- one disk on one server
ci/acme/api/main- one branch of one repository in CI
Activity
Events
What gets pushed
The server decides, for each person who follows the project, using the same rules every time. AI on the iPhone can reword a notification, but it never changes what gets pushed.
| The first event of an episode | Pushed right away. |
|---|---|
| A louder level than the last push | Pushed right away, even during the cooldown. Mutes still apply. |
| A recovery | Pushed right away, with the time the source reported it. |
| More of the same | At most one update per cooldown (5 minutes by default, adjustable from 1 to 120), with the running count. |
| Below your push threshold | Saved for the digest, which goes out every 15 minutes by default. An empty digest is never sent. |
| During your quiet hours | Held, then sent as one summary when they end. Only urgent events from a key that’s allowed to send them get through. |
| Muted, or a rule says inbox only | No push. The event is still in the inbox and still unread. |
Long honks and Blasts are always at least High priority. Urgent priority needs an ingestion key with Allow Urgent priority turned on.
One night with quiet hours
Quiet hours are set per person and per project, in your own time zone, and they handle daylight saving time. Here’s one night with quiet hours from 22:00 to 07:00:
- Quiet hours start.
- Two Light honks from a backup job. They go to the digest.
- A Long honk from the billing API. It waits until morning.
- An urgent Blast from a key that’s allowed to send urgent events. It gets through, and a Live Activity starts on the Lock Screen.
- The source reports a recovery. The Live Activity shows Recovered.
- Quiet hours end. One summary push lists what was held.
To get through, an event needs three things: it’s sent with urgent priority, its ingestion key has Allow Urgent priority turned on, and your quiet hours have Let urgent messages through turned on.
Digests and the daily summary
Routine events below your push threshold are collected into a digest: one push every 15 minutes by default, adjustable from 5 minutes to 24 hours per project and per person. Empty digests are never sent.
The daily summary is one quiet push a day at the time you choose, 8 a.m. by default. A typical one reads “2 open incidents · 5 new customer requests · 120 messages since yesterday.” It’s skipped on days when nothing arrived, and it waits until your quiet hours end.
Tuesday 6 October
08:00
Rules and mutes
A project’s rules run in order on every event. A rule can match the title, message, source, environment, channel, severity, priority, event type, group key, category or a metadata field. It can then send the event to the digest, keep it in the inbox only, set its category or raise its priority.
Mutes affect only you. Mute a group for an hour from its notification, mute a whole project, or use Mute everything in Control Center to stop all pushes from the workspace for an hour. Muted events still arrive and stay unread.
Workspaces and projects
A workspace sets who has access and how much they can use. A project is where events come from.
A workspace holds the members, their roles (owner, admin or member) and the plan. The plan’s limits are counted per workspace.
A project is an app, a server or a script. Each project has its own ingestion keys, rules, retention (up to the plan’s limit), and digest and cooldown settings.
- Everyone starts with a personal workspace on Free.
- A team creates a shared workspace and invites people.
- Owners and admins see every project. Members see the projects they have access to.
- Quiet hours, mutes and push settings are per person and per project, so they never change anyone else’s phone.
If you’ve used Sentry, it’s the same model: a workspace is an organization, a project is a project, and an ingestion key is a DSN.
- Billing API 2 ingestion keys · 4 rules · 30 days
- Home 1 ingestion key · quiet hours 22:00 to 07:00
What Honk is not
- Not a monitor. Honk receives events; it doesn’t check on your services. If a server dies silently, nothing arrives, so have an uptime check report to Honk too.
- Not an on-call pager. There are no rotations or escalation policies, and Honk never sends a text message or calls you.
- Not an archive. Messages are deleted after 3, 14 or 30 days, depending on your plan.