Give your AI agent the ability to text you

July 14, 2026 · 4 min read

Agents work best when you don’t watch them – research tasks, long builds, overnight pipelines. But an agent that can’t reach you either blocks on questions or finishes silently. A Webhooky endpoint is the simplest “notify the human” tool there is.

As a function-calling tool

Define a tool and implement it as one POST:

{
  "name": "notify_user",
  "description": "Send a push notification to the user's phone. Use when a long task finishes, fails, or needs the user's decision.",
  "input_schema": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "title":   { "type": "string", "description": "Short headline, max 100 chars" },
      "message": { "type": "string", "description": "Details, max 500 chars" }
    },
    "required": ["title", "message"]
  }
}

// the tool implementation – that's all of it
async function notify_user({ title, message }) {
  await fetch(process.env.WEBHOOKY_URL, {
    method: "POST",
    headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
    body: JSON.stringify({ title, message }),
  });
  return "notified";
}

Works identically with Anthropic tool use, OpenAI function calling, LangChain tools – the schema is the same idea everywhere.

In n8n AI workflows

Give the AI Agent node an HTTP Request tool pointing at your endpoint, with title/message as tool parameters. The agent decides when to page you; the n8n guide covers the node setup.

Terminal agents: zero integration

Coding agents that can run shell commands need no tool definition at all – tell them once:

“When the task is done or you need my input, run:
curl -X POST https://api.webhooky.app/MY_KEY -d '{"title":"🤖 Agent","message":"<status>"}'”

What agents should ping you about

Task finished – with the result summary in the message.
Approval needed – “about to publish / spend / delete, confirm on desktop”.
Failure – with "sound": "error_1", so trouble sounds different from success.
Daily digest – one scheduled summary push instead of a hundred small ones.

One caution: give the tool a crisp description like the one above – otherwise an eager agent will narrate every step to your pocket.

Get Webhooky

Free for your first 100 notifications – set up your endpoint in two minutes.