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 (deliver immediately) or Batch (aggregate events — by count, size, interval, or schedule)
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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", "batch dispatch", "event ordering", "retry policy", "TTL", "event status", "Signals logs", "Signals dashboard", "deploy Signals", or "Signals console".
