Dead Letters

Events that failed all retry attempts are stored as dead letters for inspection and manual resolution. Dead letters come from two sources: legacy index hooks (happyview_dead_letter_hooks) and trigger-keyed scripts (happyview_dead_letter_scripts). Both tables are surfaced through a single unified API.

Read endpoints require dead-letters:read. Action endpoints (dismiss, retry, reindex) require dead-letters:manage.

# All examples assume $TOKEN is an API key (hv_...)
AUTH="Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

List dead letters

GET /admin/dead-letters

Paginated list of dead letters from both tables, merged and sorted by created_at descending.

curl "http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin/dead-letters?limit=10" -H "$AUTH"

Response: 200 OK

{
  "dead_letters": [
    {
      "id": "42",
      "lexicon_id": "xyz.statusphere.status",
      "uri": "at://did:plc:abc/xyz.statusphere.status/3k...",
      "did": "did:plc:abc",
      "collection": "xyz.statusphere.status",
      "rkey": "3k...",
      "action": "create",
      "error": "script error: attempt to index nil value",
      "attempts": 4,
      "created_at": "2026-06-01T12:00:00Z"
    }
  ],
  "cursor": "2026-06-01T11:00:00Z"
}

Resolved dead letters include a resolved_at timestamp. cursor is omitted when there are no more results.

Count dead letters

GET /admin/dead-letters/count

Returns the total count of dead letters across both tables.

curl "http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin/dead-letters/count" -H "$AUTH"

Response: 200 OK

{
  "count": 7
}

Get dead letter detail

GET /admin/dead-letters/{id}

Returns the full dead letter including the record body.

curl "http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin/dead-letters/42" -H "$AUTH"

Response: 200 OK

The response includes all fields from the list view plus a record field containing the original record data (if available). Returns 404 if the dead letter is not found.

Dismiss a dead letter

POST /admin/dead-letters/{id}/dismiss

Marks a dead letter as resolved without retrying it.

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin/dead-letters/42/dismiss" -H "$AUTH"

Response: 200 OK — {"ok": true}

Returns 404 if the dead letter is not found.

Retry a dead letter

POST /admin/dead-letters/{id}/retry

Re-runs the dead letter's script with the original event payload. On success the dead letter is marked resolved. On failure the error and attempt count are updated.

Label-arrival dead letters cannot be retried — the upstream label event is gone. These return 400 Bad Request.

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin/dead-letters/42/retry" -H "$AUTH"

Response: 200 OK — {"ok": true}

Returns 404 if no matching script binding is found, or if the dead letter is not found or already resolved.

Reindex a dead letter

POST /admin/dead-letters/{id}/reindex

Fetches the record fresh from the author's PDS and re-runs the full record indexing pipeline. On success the dead letter is marked resolved. Label-arrival dead letters cannot be reindexed and return 400 Bad Request.

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin/dead-letters/42/reindex" -H "$AUTH"

Response: 200 OK — {"ok": true}

Bulk dismiss

POST /admin/dead-letters/bulk/dismiss

Dismiss multiple dead letters at once.

One of ids or all: true is required.

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin/dead-letters/bulk/dismiss" \
  -H "$AUTH" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"ids": ["42", "43", "44"]}'

Response: 200 OK — {"ok": true}

Bulk retry

POST /admin/dead-letters/bulk/retry

Retry multiple dead letters. Accepts the same input as bulk dismiss.

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin/dead-letters/bulk/retry" \
  -H "$AUTH" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"all": true, "collection": "xyz.statusphere.status"}'

Response: 200 OK — {"ok": true}

Bulk reindex

POST /admin/dead-letters/bulk/reindex

Reindex multiple dead letters. Accepts the same input as bulk dismiss.

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:3000/admin/dead-letters/bulk/reindex" \
  -H "$AUTH" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"all": true}'

Response: 200 OK — {"ok": true}