Documentation

Get started with DeadPing

DeadPing uses the dead man's switch pattern. Your job pings a unique URL after every successful run. If the ping doesn't arrive on time, you get alerted.

Quick Setup

  1. Create a monitor in the dashboard or via the API
  2. Copy the ping URL (looks like https://deadping.io/api/ping/YOUR_TOKEN)
  3. Add one curl to the end of your script
bash
#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

# Your actual job
OUTPUT=$(pg_dump "$DATABASE_URL" | gzip > /backups/db.sql.gz 2>&1)
EXIT_CODE=$?

# Ping DeadPing with output capture + exit code
curl -fsS --retry 3 -X POST \
  "https://deadping.io/api/ping/YOUR_TOKEN?exit_code=$EXIT_CODE&duration_ms=45000" \
  -H "Content-Type: text/plain" \
  -d "$OUTPUT"

The ping endpoint accepts GET, POST, and HEAD requests. No authentication required. The token in the URL is the identifier. Use POST with a body to capture stdout/stderr output.

Integrations

Alert channels configured in your dashboard settings.

Email

Alert emails when a monitor goes down or recovers. Uses your account email by default.

Slack

Pro

Post down, recovery, and anomaly alerts to a Slack channel via incoming webhook.

Discord

Pro

Alert notifications to a Discord channel via webhook.

Microsoft Teams

Pro

Post alerts to a Teams channel via incoming webhook.

PagerDuty

Pro

Trigger and auto-resolve PagerDuty incidents from monitor state changes.

OpenClaw

Pro

Trigger an OpenClaw AI agent on failures and let it query DeadPing for live status.

Guides

API reference, features, and advanced configuration.

API Keys

Create and manage API keys for programmatic access to your monitors.

API Reference

Full REST API documentation for creating, updating, and deleting monitors.

Output Capture

Capture stdout/stderr, exit codes, and execution duration with each ping.

Progress Tracking

Report real-time progress for long-running jobs via query parameters.

Bulk Import

Import monitors from crontab files or Kubernetes CronJob YAML manifests.

Incidents

Automatic alert grouping, suppression, and post-incident summaries. Business plan.

Anomaly Detection

Automatic detection of duration spikes, irregular ping intervals, and error rate surges. Pro plan and above.

MCP Server

Connect AI assistants like Claude to manage your monitors via Model Context Protocol.

Platform Examples

Copy-paste ping snippets for common infrastructure tools.

CI/CD Pipelines

GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and CircleCI integration examples.

Terraform

Manage monitors as infrastructure alongside your Terraform configs.

Docker & Compose

Add pings to containerized cron jobs, healthchecks, and compose services.

Kubernetes

Monitor CronJobs with ping sidecars and Kubernetes secrets.

From the blog

5 Ways Your Cron Jobs Are Failing Silently

The most common silent failure modes and how to catch them.

Kubernetes CronJob Monitoring

Catch missed schedules, stuck jobs, and scheduling failures.