Prerequisites
Before using Signals, activate it once per project in the console:
Console → your project → Signals (left sidebar) → click "Start Exploring"
Skipping this step prevents access to Publishers, Webhooks, Rules, and Logs. This is a one-time activation per project.
How It Works
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Console-Only Service — HARD STOP if user expects SDK/API. Catalyst Signals is configured entirely through the Catalyst Console — there is NO SDK, REST API, or programmatic interface for creating publishers, rules, or webhooks. All setup is done via the console UI.
- Publishers, events, webhooks, and rules are created in Console → Signals
- Functions and Circuits are created separately in Console → Serverless, then selected as targets in Signals rules
- The only code-level interaction is receiving events in target functions/circuits
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Understand the flow — Publisher → Event → Rule (with filters/transforms) → Target (Webhook/Function/Circuit)
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Load
references/signals-basics.md— for publishers (Zoho/Catalyst/Custom), events, rules, targets, dispatch policies, event statuses, and deployment gotchas -
Key concepts:
- Publishers emit events when actions occur (3 types: Zoho, Catalyst CloudScale, Custom)
- Events are JSON payloads with auto-generated schemas (max 100KB for Zoho, 64KB for Custom)
- Rules connect publishers to targets with optional filters and payload transformations
- Targets receive events via Webhooks, Functions, or Circuits
- Dispatch Policy controls event delivery: Instant (default, immediate) or Batch (by count / size / schedule / attribute; TTL fixed at 24h). "One-Time Dispatch" is NOT a policy — it is the no-retry fallback delivery that fires when a Batch's conditions are never met before TTL expiry
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Deployment warning — Rules are locked in production (enable/disable only). All rule changes must be made in Development and deployed. Max 25 publishers per deployment.
Security Checklist
- Custom publisher REST API rate limit: 500 requests per minute. Exceeding this locks the API URL for 60 seconds.
- Environment-specific REST API URLs: Custom event REST API URLs differ between Development and Production — update URLs when deploying.
- Function/Circuit targets inherit their own permissions: If a function is the target, it runs with whatever scope it was configured with (user or admin). Signals does not override function-level permissions.
- Event payload size limits: Zoho publishers max 100KB per event (5MB for multi-event batch). Custom publishers max 64KB per event (256KB for up to 25 events).
Triggers
Use this skill for: "Signals", "Catalyst event bus", "event-driven architecture", "publisher", "Zoho publisher", "Catalyst publisher", "custom publisher", "event schema", "rule", "event filter", "event transformation", "webhook target", "dispatch policy", "instant dispatch", "one-time dispatch", "scheduled dispatch", "batch dispatch", "event ordering", "retry policy", "TTL", "event status", "Signals logs", "Signals dashboard", "deploy Signals", or "Signals console".
