Webhook

A message from one system to another saying "this just happened." A payment lands, a form gets submitted, a delivery goes out — and the system it happened in pings your address to say so, unprompted. It's how outside events wake an AI up.

The supplier ringing you the moment the worktop arrives, instead of you ringing them every hour to ask.

Near enough the opposite of a hook, despite the name. A webhook fires when something outside pings in. A hook fires on your own AI's actions, from the inside — your shop rule that every job gets photographed before the van leaves.

Why it matters: webhooks are what turn an AI from something that answers when asked into something that responds when things happen. That's the whole basis of work getting done while you're asleep.

Related: Hook · Cron (scheduled job)