Live Tail

Live Tail streams incoming webhook events in real time, letting you watch deliveries as they happen — ideal for debugging integrations during development or monitoring production traffic.

Overview

Live Tail uses Socket.IO to push new events to the dashboard as they are received. When enabled, the event list auto-scrolls to show the latest event at the top, with a live status indicator and payload preview.

ℹLive Tail uses the same authentication cookie as the dashboard — no additional configuration is needed. The Socket.IO connection is established automatically when you toggle Live Tail on.

How to use

Open a webhook's events view

Navigate to a webhook detail page and go to the Events tab.

Toggle Live Tail on

Click the Live Tail toggle in the top-right corner of the events list. A pulsing green dot indicates the connection is active.

Watch events stream in

New events appear at the top of the list as they arrive. The view auto-scrolls to keep the latest event visible.

Click an event for details

Click any event row to open the detail drawer with full payload, headers, and delivery status — even while Live Tail is running.

Event data shown

Each event in the Live Tail stream shows:

Field	Description
Event ID	Unique identifier for the event
Status	Current status (PENDING, DELIVERED, FAILED, FILTERED, etc.)
Timestamp	When the event was received
Payload preview	Truncated first line of the JSON payload

Socket.IO details

Under the hood, Live Tail subscribes to the new-event Socket.IO event. The connection uses the same auth cookie that authenticates the dashboard session.

Event payload

jsonSocket.IO 'new-event' payload

{
  "eventId": "664a1f2e8b1c4a001f2d0001",
  "webhookId": "664a1f2e8b1c4a001f2d0010",
  "status": "PENDING",
  "timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:30:00.000Z",
  "payloadPreview": "{"type":"payment_intent.succeeded","data":{"object":{"id":"pi_3P..."}}}"
}

Using with a custom client

If you want to consume the live stream outside of the dashboard (for example, in a monitoring tool), connect a Socket.IO client:

javascriptSocket.IO client example

import { io } from "socket.io-client";

const socket = io("https://app.hostwebhook.com", {
  withCredentials: true, // send auth cookie
});

socket.on("new-event", (event) => {
  console.log("New event:", event.eventId, event.status);
  console.log("Payload:", event.payloadPreview);
});

socket.on("connect", () => {
  console.log("Live Tail connected");
});

socket.on("disconnect", () => {
  console.log("Live Tail disconnected");
});

⚠Live Tail maintains an open WebSocket connection. Toggle it off when not actively monitoring to avoid unnecessary resource usage, especially on high-traffic webhooks.

Tips

Use Live Tail during development to confirm that your webhook source is sending events to the correct webhook.
Combine with payload filters — filtered events still appear in Live Tail with status FILTERED, so you can verify your filter rules are working.
Status updates (e.g., PENDING to DELIVERED) are pushed as separate socket events, so you can watch the full lifecycle.