sentry-create-alert

Create Sentry Alert

Create alerts via Sentry’s workflow engine API.

Note: This API is currently in beta and may be subject to change. It is part of New Monitors and Alerts and may not be viewable in the legacy Alerts UI.

Invoke This Skill When

• User asks to “create a Sentry alert” or “set up notifications”
• User wants to be emailed or notified when issues match certain conditions
• User mentions priority alerts, de-escalation alerts, or workflow automations
• User wants to configure Slack, PagerDuty, or email notifications for Sentry issues

Prerequisites

• curl available in shell
• Sentry org auth token with alerts:write scope (also accepts org:admin or org:write)

Phase 1: Gather Configuration

Ask the user for any missing details:

Detail	Required	Example
Org slug	Yes	sentry, my-org
Auth token	Yes	sntryu_... (needs alerts:write scope)
Region	Yes (default: us)	us → us.sentry.io, de → de.sentry.io
Alert name	Yes	"High Priority De-escalation Alert"
Trigger events	Yes	Which issue events fire the workflow
Conditions	Optional	Filter conditions before actions execute
Action type	Yes	email, slack, or pagerduty
Action target	Yes	User email, team, channel, or service

Phase 2: Look Up IDs

Use these API calls to resolve names to IDs as needed.

API="https://{region}.sentry.io/api/0/organizations/{org}"
AUTH="Authorization: Bearer {token}"

# Find user ID by email
curl -s "$API/members/" -H "$AUTH" | python3 -c "
import json,sys
for m in json.load(sys.stdin):
  if m.get('email')=='USER_EMAIL' or m.get('user',{}).get('email')=='USER_EMAIL':
    print(m['user']['id']); break"

# List teams
curl -s "$API/teams/" -H "$AUTH" | python3 -c "
import json,sys
for t in json.load(sys.stdin):
  print(t['id'], t['slug'])"

# List integrations (for Slack/PagerDuty)
curl -s "$API/integrations/" -H "$AUTH" | python3 -c "
import json,sys
for i in json.load(sys.stdin):
  print(i['id'], i['provider']['key'], i['name'])"

Phase 3: Build Payload

Trigger Events

Pick which issue events fire the workflow. Use logicType: "any-short" (triggers must always use this).

Type	Fires when
first_seen_event	New issue created
regression_event	Resolved issue recurs
reappeared_event	Archived issue reappears
issue_resolved_trigger	Issue is resolved

Filter Conditions

Conditions that must pass before actions execute. Use logicType: "all", "any-short", or "none".

The comparison field is polymorphic — its shape depends on the condition type:

Type	comparison format	Description
issue_priority_greater_or_equal	75 (bare integer)	Priority >= Low(25)/Medium(50)/High(75)
issue_priority_deescalating	true (bare boolean)	Priority dropped below peak
event_frequency_count	{"value": 100, "interval": "1hr"}	Event count in time window
event_unique_user_frequency_count	{"value": 50, "interval": "1hr"}	Affected users in time window
tagged_event	{"key": "level", "match": "eq", "value": "error"}	Event tag matches
assigned_to	{"targetType": "Member", "targetIdentifier": 123}	Issue assigned to target
level	{"level": 40, "match": "gte"}	Event level (fatal=50, error=40, warning=30)
age_comparison	{"time": "hour", "value": 24, "comparisonType": "older"}	Issue age
issue_category	{"value": 1}	Category (1=Error, 6=Feedback, 10=Outage: uptime and cron)
issue_occurrences	{"value": 100}	Total occurrence count

Interval options: "1min", "5min", "15min", "1hr", "1d", "1w", "30d"

Tag match types: "co" (contains), "nc" (not contains), "eq", "ne", "sw" (starts with), "ew" (ends with), "is" (set), "ns" (not set)

Set conditionResult to false to invert (fire when condition is NOT met).

Actions

Type	Key Config
email	config.targetType: "user" / "team" / "issue_owners", config.targetIdentifier: <id>
slack	integrationId: <id>, config.targetDisplay: "#channel-name"
pagerduty	integrationId: <id>, config.targetDisplay: <service_name>, data.priority: "critical"
discord	integrationId: <id>, data.tags: tag list
msteams	integrationId: <id>, config.targetDisplay: <channel>
opsgenie	integrationId: <id>, data.priority: "P1"-"P5"
jira	integrationId: <id>, data: project/issue config
github	integrationId: <id>, data: repo/issue config

Full Payload Structure

{
  "name": "<Alert Name>",
  "enabled": true,
  "environment": null,
  "config": { "frequency": 30 },
  "triggers": {
    "logicType": "any-short",
    "conditions": [
      { "type": "first_seen_event", "comparison": true, "conditionResult": true }
    ],
    "actions": []
  },
  "actionFilters": [{
    "logicType": "all",
    "conditions": [
      { "type": "issue_priority_greater_or_equal", "comparison": 75, "conditionResult": true },
      { "type": "event_frequency_count", "comparison": {"value": 50, "interval": "1hr"}, "conditionResult": true }
    ],
    "actions": [{
      "type": "email",
      "integrationId": null,
      "data": {},
      "config": {
        "targetType": "user",
        "targetIdentifier": "<user_id>",
        "targetDisplay": null
      },
      "status": "active"
    }]
  }]
}

frequency: minutes between repeated notifications. Allowed values: 0, 5, 10, 30, 60, 180, 720, 1440.

Structure note: triggers.actions is always [] — actions live inside actionFilters[].actions.

Phase 4: Create the Alert

curl -s -w "\n%{http_code}" -X POST \
  "https://{region}.sentry.io/api/0/organizations/{org}/workflows/" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer {token}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{payload}'

Expect HTTP 201. The response contains the workflow id.

Phase 5: Verify

Confirm the alert was created and provide the UI link:

https://{org_slug}.sentry.io/monitors/alerts/{workflow_id}/

If the org lacks the workflow-engine-ui feature flag, the alert appears at:

https://{org_slug}.sentry.io/alerts/rules/

Managing Alerts

# List all workflows
curl -s "$API/workflows/" -H "$AUTH"

# Get one workflow
curl -s "$API/workflows/{id}/" -H "$AUTH"

# Update a workflow
curl -s -X PUT "$API/workflows/{id}/" -H "$AUTH" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{payload}'

# Delete a workflow
curl -s -X DELETE "$API/workflows/{id}/" -H "$AUTH"
# Expect 204

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
401 Unauthorized	Token needs alerts:write scope
403 Forbidden	Token must belong to the target org
404 Not Found	Check org slug and region (us vs de)
400 Bad Request	Validate payload JSON structure, check required fields
User ID not found	Verify email matches a member of the org