Getting Started with Rumbliq: Monitor Your First API in 60 Seconds

Your app relies on third-party APIs — Stripe for payments, Twilio for SMS, GitHub for integrations. When those APIs change without warning, your integrations break. You find out when a customer reports it, or worse, from a spike in errors at 2 AM.

Rumbliq fixes this. It continuously monitors API endpoints, detects structural schema changes, and alerts you the moment something shifts — before your users notice.

This tutorial walks you through getting Rumbliq set up from scratch. By the end, you'll have a live monitor watching a real API endpoint and an alert configured to notify you when it changes.

What You'll Need

Step 1: Create Your Account

Navigate to rumbliq.com/signup.

You can sign up with email, GitHub, or Google. The GitHub OAuth option is particularly convenient for developers — one click and you're in.

If you sign up with email, check your inbox for a verification link. You'll need to verify before creating monitors.

After logging in, you'll see an empty dashboard. Let's add your first monitor.

Step 2: Add Your First Monitor

Click New Monitor in the top right of the dashboard.

Name Your Monitor

Give it a descriptive name. Stripe Payment Intents or Shopify Products API is more useful than monitor_1 — you'll appreciate the clarity when you have ten monitors running.

Set the Endpoint URL

Paste the URL of the API endpoint you want to watch. For example, to monitor Stripe's payment intents endpoint:

https://api.stripe.com/v1/payment_intents

Or to monitor a public endpoint with no auth required:

https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World

Configure Authentication

If your endpoint requires authentication, click Add Header and add an Authorization header:

Authorization: Bearer your_api_token_here

For production use, Rumbliq's Credential Vault (available on Pro and above) stores your tokens with AES-256-GCM encryption so they're never exposed in plain text. We'll cover that in a moment.

Set Check Frequency

Choose how often Rumbliq should poll the endpoint:

Plan Minimum interval
Free 60 minutes
Pro 15 minutes
Team 5 minutes
Enterprise 1 minute

For critical payment or auth APIs, use the shortest interval your plan allows. For less critical endpoints, 60 minutes is usually sufficient.

Click Create Monitor.

Step 3: Understand Your First Check

Once created, Rumbliq immediately runs its first check. This establishes a baseline — a snapshot of the API's response schema at this moment in time.

Click on your new monitor to see the detail view. You'll see:

The schema view shows you the full response structure — field names, types, and nesting. This is the baseline Rumbliq will compare against on every future check.

Step 4: Trigger a Manual Check

You don't have to wait for the next scheduled check. In the monitor detail view, click Run Check Now.

This runs an immediate check and updates the check history. It's useful for verifying your monitor configuration is working before waiting for the next scheduled run.

Step 5: Configure an Alert

By default, Rumbliq notifies you by email when drift is detected. To add a Slack alert:

  1. Click Alerts in the sidebar
  2. Click New Alert
  3. Choose Slack as the destination
  4. Paste your Slack webhook URL
  5. Choose which severity levels should trigger the alert:
    • Breaking changes (required fields removed, types changed)
    • Non-breaking changes (new optional fields added)
    • Errors (the endpoint returned an error or became unreachable)

You can create multiple alert destinations — email, Slack, or any webhook endpoint — and configure each one independently.

Step 6: Secure Your Credentials with the Vault

If you're monitoring APIs that require authentication in a production environment, store your tokens in the Credential Vault instead of pasting them directly into headers.

  1. Navigate to Credentials in the sidebar

  2. Click New Credential

  3. Choose the credential type:

    • API Key — for services that use X-API-Key or similar headers
    • Bearer Token — for JWT or OAuth access tokens
    • Basic Auth — for username/password encoded credentials
    • OAuth2 Client — for tokens that need automatic refresh
    • Custom Headers — for anything else

  4. Enter your credentials and save

Back in your monitor settings, select the credential from the Credential dropdown instead of entering the header value manually.

Vault credentials are stored encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM using per-user HKDF-derived keys. Your tokens are never stored in plain text.

What Happens When Drift Is Detected

The first time Rumbliq detects a schema change, it will:

  1. Log the change in your check history with a visual diff showing exactly what changed
  2. Fire all configured alerts immediately
  3. Update the monitor status badge on your dashboard

The drift diff looks like this:

- "amount": number (required)
+ "amount": string (required)

+ "amount_decimal": string (optional)

Fields marked in red were removed or changed. Fields in green were added. The diff tells you exactly which fields changed and how — so you know immediately whether it's a breaking change or just an additive update.

Using the API Programmatically

Once you're comfortable with the UI, you can manage monitors via the Rumbliq REST API. This is useful for automating monitor creation or integrating with your deployment workflows.

First, generate an API key:

  1. Click your avatar in the top right
  2. Navigate to API Keys
  3. Click New API Key and give it a label

With your API key, you can create monitors via HTTP:

curl -X POST https://rumbliq.com/v1/monitors \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer dk_live_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Stripe Payment Intents",
    "url": "https://api.stripe.com/v1/payment_intents",
    "interval": 15,
    "headers": {
      "Authorization": "Bearer sk_test_your_stripe_key"
    }
  }'

Or list your existing monitors:

curl https://rumbliq.com/v1/monitors \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer dk_live_your_api_key"

The full API reference is available at rumbliq.com/docs.

Import from OpenAPI, Postman, or cURL

If you already have API definitions or collections, you can import them directly instead of creating monitors one by one:

Navigate to Monitors → Import to use this feature.

Next Steps

You've set up your first monitor and alert. Here's where to go from here:

Questions? Join the conversation in our community or reach out at [email protected].

Sign up for free →

Further reading: