> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.pidgeon.health/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Alerting

> Get notified through PagerDuty, email, or webhook the moment an interface starts failing — not hours later.

Five channels, three severity levels, deduplication, and escalation routing. Configurable per interface.

## Alert Channels

| Channel                      | Supported |
| ---------------------------- | :-------: |
| Local log                    |    Yes    |
| Webhook (Slack, Teams, etc.) |    Yes    |
| Email (SMTP)                 |    Yes    |
| PagerDuty                    |    Yes    |

Alert payloads are redacted before they go out to any channel — message content never leaves your network.

<Tip>Use the webhook channel to integrate with Slack, Microsoft Teams, or any service that accepts incoming webhooks.</Tip>

## Advanced Alert Features

* **Deduplication** — Suppresses repeat alerts for the same issue within a configurable window
* **Escalation** — Routes alerts based on severity to different channels or on-call groups
* **Detailed payloads** — Each alert includes file path, severity, error/warning counts, message type, sending application, and full error list

## Severity Levels

| Level      | Description                                              |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| `critical` | Interface down or failure rate exceeds threshold         |
| `warning`  | Elevated error rate or anomalous throughput              |
| `info`     | Informational events (interface started, config changed) |

## Alert Lifecycle

Alerts follow a lifecycle: **triggered** → **acknowledged** → **resolved**.

```bash theme={null}
# List recent alerts
pidgeon loft alerts --since 6h

# List critical alerts only
pidgeon loft alerts --severity critical

# Acknowledge an alert via the local Bridge API
curl -X POST http://localhost:5100/api/loft/alerts/{id}/acknowledge
```

## Example Alert

```text theme={null}
CRITICAL: Validation failure rate exceeded threshold
Interface: ER Interface
Message: 12.3% failure rate in the last 15 minutes (threshold: 5%)
Triggered: 2026-02-22T14:15:00Z
Failed messages: 47
Top errors: PID.5 empty (23), PV1.2 invalid (18), DG1 missing (6)
```

<Note>Acknowledging an alert records that a human reviewed it but does not resolve the underlying issue. Use [AI Triage](/api-reference/ai-triage) for recommended fixes.</Note>