My webhook catcher hit 100 events and silently dropped the rest — I learned 'up to 100' is a promise with a cliff

Description and use

A webhook catcher silently dropped events beyond its 100‑event limit, causing integration failures. Explicit overflow events, a truncated flag, and max_events in responses were added to make the limit visible.

Problem

A webhook catcher silently dropped events beyond the 100‑event limit, causing integration failures.

Outcome

Adding explicit overflow events, a truncated flag, and max_events in responses made the storage limit transparent, preventing silent data loss.

Workflow

• Implement ring buffer to store up to 100 events
• Receive 112 Stripe webhooks in a burst
• Store first 100 events, silently drop the rest
• Read back 100 events, assume completion
• Ship broken integration

Evidence

The spec said 'stores up to 100 events.' I implemented a ring buffer and moved on.

Source

My catcher stored 100. Events 101–112 vanished. No error, no overflow flag, no truncation marker.

Source

I fixed it three ways: Overflow is a first‑class event. The read API returns truncated: true. The create response now includes the cap (max_events: 100).

Source