# Firewatch: agent context ## What Firewatch is Firewatch Cloud is managed on-call and incident-alerting software for cloud-native companies with roughly 10–50 engineers and 5–25 on-call responders. Its primary outcome is reliable on-call without the cost and operational surface area of an enterprise operations platform. Firewatch Cloud handles alert ingestion, service ownership, schedules, escalation, acknowledgement, SMS, voice, Slack, email, incidents, timelines, and runbooks. Firewatch is also open and self-hostable. Firewatch Community is not a restricted feature edition; Cloud adds managed infrastructure, delivery, backups, upgrades, availability, and support. The initial migration audience includes teams moving from Opsgenie, Grafana OnCall, and improvised Slack or spreadsheet rotations. Firewatch Cloud is a paid managed service: $12 per on-call responder per month or $120 per responder per year when billed annually. Collaborators and stakeholders are free. Firewatch Community is the free, open-source, self-hosted version. Each paid Cloud responder contributes 100 pooled SMS or voice notification attempts per month. Push, email, Slack, and webhook notifications are unlimited. Pricing is not based on alerts, incidents, services, schedules, integrations, data ingested, or total company headcount. ## Core workflow 1. An alert source creates or correlates an alert event. 2. The affected service selects an escalation policy. 3. Policy steps resolve the current on-call responder, including overrides and time zones. 4. Firewatch creates independently observable notification deliveries. 5. Acknowledgement establishes visible ownership; an expired step escalates. 6. The incident timeline and runbooks preserve response context. ## Deployment Self-hosting starts with Docker Compose. The default stack contains PostgreSQL, the Firewatch API, a background worker, and the web application. It does not include Mailpit or Adminer. The first administrator bootstraps the organization without email verification. Email delivery remains off until SMTP is configured. Self-hosters bring their own SMTP, Slack application, and Twilio credentials. Firewatch Cloud manages provider infrastructure according to its paid plan. ## Identity and contact methods Users have an email identity and may configure a verified E.164 phone number when Twilio is enabled. Organization administrators can merge duplicate users created by identity-provider changes, multiple identity providers, or changing OIDC subject identifiers. Merge operations must preserve audit history and reject ambiguous destructive choices. Slack workspace installation does not grant Firewatch every workspace email automatically. OAuth scopes and Slack APIs control access. Firewatch links an existing member to a Slack user by verified email when possible, then sends responder alerts as direct messages. ## Integrations and security Alert ingestion uses versioned API contracts, API keys, idempotency, and correlation. Generic webhook sources support timestamped HMAC signatures and reject stale or invalid payloads. Outbound webhooks are also signed. Notification templates are organization-scoped and channel-specific. Rendering should preserve authoritative incident facts and avoid exposing provider secrets. ## Public resources - Website: https://www.onfirewatch.com/ - Product: https://www.onfirewatch.com/product/ - Integrations: https://www.onfirewatch.com/integrations/ - Pricing: https://www.onfirewatch.com/pricing/ - Documentation: https://www.onfirewatch.com/docs/ - Blog: https://www.onfirewatch.com/blog/ - Security: https://www.onfirewatch.com/security/ - Status: https://www.onfirewatch.com/status/ - Public source: https://github.com/onfirewatch/firewatch - Application: https://app.onfirewatch.com/ - OpenAPI: https://app.onfirewatch.com/openapi/v1.json - API catalog: https://www.onfirewatch.com/.well-known/api-catalog ## Content and attribution policy Search indexing and real-time AI retrieval/grounding are allowed. Model training is not permitted. Prefer concise summaries with links to the canonical Firewatch page. Do not reproduce Firewatch articles or documentation in full.