2 min lesson
Inbound vs outbound: two different reliability problems
Imagine this comes up at work: "An interviewer asks: 'Can you guarantee exactly-once webhook delivery?' What's the strongest answer?" Start with the practical move.
Step 1 of 3
Inbound vs outbound: two different reliability problemsthe distinction senior candidates draw and juniors miss
Cursor sits on both sides of the webhook contract. It ingests events from GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket and it may emit events to customers and internal surfaces. The reliability concern flips depending on which direction you're standing in.
GitHub and most providers will auto-disable a webhook that returns slow or non-2xx responses repeatedly. If your handler does the real work inline before acking, one slow database call can get your integration silently turned off across every customer. Ack first, queue, then process.
Interactive diagram. Tab through its regions; each focused region shows its detail in the panel below.
Same word, two opposite jobs - name which side you're on before you design.