Skip to main content
A signal is a notification that something has occurred in a CDF process. The Signals API lets you register signal sinks where those signals are delivered, and define signal subscriptions that filter which signals go to which sinks. Signals are intended for event-style notifications and integrations—for example surfacing workflow failures, extractor health, or other operational events to external systems.

​
Concepts

  • Sinks — Delivery targets for signals: an email sink or a user sink. Create, list, update, and delete sinks through the sinks endpoints.
  • Subscriptions — Rules that select which signals to receive and which sink should receive them. Manage subscriptions with the subscriptions endpoints.
  • Listing signals — Retrieve published signals with the list endpoint when you need to inspect or debug traffic.

​
Configure as code

If you use the Cognite Toolkit, you can represent sinks and subscriptions as YAML resources under a signals/ directory. See the toolkit resource library for supported kinds and examples.

​
Rate and concurrency limits

Signals share the general CDF request budgets. For limit types and throttling behavior, see API rate limits.
Last modified on May 8, 2026