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A Shortext endpoint connects your own software to an agent. Your server posts each message written by one of your users; the agent answers; your server shows the reply.

1. Create the endpoint

From the dashboard or with POST /api/v2.0/channels/shortext (Manage integrations):
The response is a channel with its id (ste_...) and settings.inbound_url. When you set a webhook_url, it also holds the webhook_secret, shown once. POST /channels/shortext/{id}/rotate-secret issues a new one (the old one stops working at once).

2. Send a user message

POST https://shortext.ny-corp.io/api/v1.0/messages/inbound, with your API key:
This endpoint is served under /api/v1.0 and works with the same API keys as v2.0. It does not check key permissions.

3. Read the outcome

The response body holds status, the stored message and, in sync mode, replies:

Idempotency

message.id is your own message id. If you send the same id again (a retry after a timeout, for example), Shortext does not store it twice nor answer twice: you get duplicate with the original message. Always retry with the same message.id.

4. Receive replies on your webhook

Replies (async mode, sync timeouts, answers written by your team in the Inbox) are posted to webhook_url as message.sent events, with the same body, headers and signature as every Shortext webhook:
Use data.contact.identifier (your user id) to route the reply to the right user. Verify the signature with the endpoint’s webhook_secret:
Deliveries are retried for about 21 hours on failure; deduplicate on the event id.

Errors