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A trigger is a subscription. You give Nous a URL and a list of events; whenever one of those events happens on the Account Record, Nous POSTs a signed payload to your URL. The point is the same as the rest of the platform. Your workflow runtime (n8n, Make, a Claude routine, a custom backend) does not need to subscribe to Smartlead, HeyReach, Instantly, Gmail, LinkedIn, Calendly, Fireflies, and Fathom separately. Nous already ingests all of them, resolves them to one person, and emits a unified event stream. You subscribe once.

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The event catalog

Six events ship in v1. All are interactions — the moments that drive a workflow. See the events reference for sample payloads.
EventFired when
interaction.email_receivedA reply lands (Instantly, Smartlead, EmailBison, Lemlist, Gmail)
interaction.email_bouncedA bounce or unsubscribe
interaction.linkedin_connection_acceptedA connection request was accepted
interaction.linkedin_message_receivedA reply on LinkedIn
interaction.meeting_scheduledA booking on Calendly or Cal.com
interaction.meeting_heldFireflies or Fathom recorded a meeting
More events will be added over time. The naming is interaction.<verb> so new events do not collide with existing claim properties.

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What’s in the payload

Small on purpose. Just enough to identify the person and what happened. 
{
  "event_id": "evt_a1b2c3...",
  "event_type": "interaction.email_received",
  "occurred_at": "2026-05-27T14:33:18Z",
  "workspace_id": "ws_...",
  "entity_id": "ent_...",
  "person": {
    "entity_id": "ent_...",
    "email": "sarah@acme.com",
    "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/sarah-chen",
    "name": "Sarah Chen",
    "job_title": "VP Sales",
    "company": "Acme"
  },
  "event_data": {
    "source": "instantly",
    "summary": "Yes, interested in seeing this. When works for a 15-min?",
    "description": null,
    "external_id": "msg_inst_98123"
  }
}
When your workflow needs more — the timeline, every claim, open predictions, attention items — call /v2/context or /v2/accounts/:id with the entity_id from the payload. The receiver re-fetches; Nous does not bloat every event.

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Signing

Every POST carries an HMAC-SHA256 signature of the raw body, computed with the signing secret returned at create time. Verify it before trusting the payload. 
POST /your-webhook
Content-Type: application/json
User-Agent: Nous-Triggers/1.0
X-Nous-Signature: sha256=<hex>
X-Nous-Event-Id: evt_a1b2c3...
X-Nous-Event-Type: interaction.email_received

import crypto from 'node:crypto';

function verifyNousSignature(rawBody: string, header: string, secret: string) {
  const expected = 'sha256=' + crypto.createHmac('sha256', secret).update(rawBody).digest('hex');
  // constant-time compare — protects against timing attacks
  const a = Buffer.from(expected);
  const b = Buffer.from(header);
  return a.length === b.length && crypto.timingSafeEqual(a, b);
}
The signing secret is returned once, in the response to POST /api/triggers. Save it. If you lose it, rotate via PATCH /api/triggers/:id with { "rotate_secret": true }.

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Idempotency

X-Nous-Event-Id is unique per event. If you see the same id twice (rare — only happens when Nous retries and your earlier response was actually received), drop the duplicate.

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Retry policy

If your URL returns 2xx, the event is marked delivered. If it returns 5xx, 408, 429, or times out, Nous retries with exponential backoff (1m, 5m, 30m) up to three attempts, then dead-letters. A 4xx response (other than 408/429) is treated as a permanent failure and not retried — fix the bug and rotate-replay if you need to recover. The delivery worker runs every 30 seconds, so a successful event reaches your URL within a minute of the underlying interaction landing in Nous.

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Setting one up

Triggers are managed in the app, not through the REST API. Open Settings → Triggers in your workspace, click New trigger, paste your URL, pick the events you care about. The signing secret is shown once at create time — save it to your receiver.