> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.acmeagentsupply.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Transmission Overview

> Signal transport integrity across the ACME reliability stack

# Transmission

Transmission ensures that reliability signals — detections, alerts, incident events, recovery state — move correctly between components of the ACME stack. It's the connective tissue that keeps your reliability infrastructure coherent.

## Why Signal Integrity Matters

Each component in the ACME stack produces signals: Sentinel detects a stall, Watchdog misses a heartbeat, OCTriage classifies an incident. For your reliability infrastructure to work as a whole, those signals need to:

* **Arrive** — reach the right destination
* **Arrive intact** — not corrupted or truncated in transit
* **Arrive in order** — timelines must be reconstructible
* **Arrive once** — no duplicated events inflating incident counts

Without this, your tools disagree. Agent911 shows one state; Sentinel shows another. You spend incident time debugging your monitoring, not your agents.

**Transmission solves this.**

## What Transmission Does

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Event Delivery Guarantees" icon="circle-check">
    At-least-once delivery with deduplication. Events arrive, or you know they didn't.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Order Preservation" icon="list-ol">
    Detection events, classification results, and recovery state maintained in sequence.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Coherence Verification" icon="check-double">
    Validates that signal consumers (Agent911, alert channels) received what was sent.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Dead Letter Handling" icon="inbox">
    Failed deliveries captured and surfaced for operator review — nothing silently dropped.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Signal Architecture

Transmission operates as the transport layer between ACME components:

```
┌──────────────┐    ┌────────────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐
│  Sentinel    │───▶│                    │───▶│    Agent911      │
│  Watchdog    │───▶│   Transmission     │───▶│    Alert Channel │
│  DriftGuard  │───▶│   Signal Router    │───▶│    Webhooks      │
│  SphinxGate  │───▶│                    │───▶│    Operator CLI  │
└──────────────┘    └────────────────────┘    └──────────────────┘
                             │
                    ┌────────▼────────┐
                    │  Event Journal  │
                    │  (append-only)  │
                    └─────────────────┘
```

The event journal is the source of truth. Every signal from every component is written there before delivery. This enables:

* **Replay** — reconstruct exactly what happened and when
* **Audit** — prove what signals were sent and received
* **Recovery** — resume delivery after a disruption without losing events

## Signal Types

Transmission handles four categories of reliability signal:

| Category                   | Examples                                                                 |
| -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Detection events**       | Stall detected, heartbeat missed, drift alert, routing anomaly           |
| **Classification results** | OCTriage incident classification, confidence score, evidence bundle path |
| **State transitions**      | Agent health change, recovery started, recovery verified                 |
| **Operator actions**       | Snapshot triggered, playbook started, bundle exported                    |

Each signal type has a defined schema, ensuring consumers know exactly what they're receiving.

## Delivery Channels

Transmission routes signals to configured destinations:

```yaml theme={null}
# ~/.acme/transmission.yaml
channels:
  agent911:
    enabled: true
    endpoint: local            # Local Agent911 instance

  webhooks:
    - name: "pagerduty"
      url: https://events.pagerduty.com/v2/enqueue
      secret: ${PAGERDUTY_KEY}
      filter:
        severity: [HIGH, CRITICAL]   # Only escalate high-severity events

    - name: "slack-alerts"
      url: https://hooks.slack.com/services/...
      filter:
        types: [STALL, CRASH, RECOVERY_FAILED]

  email:
    enabled: true
    to: oncall@yourcompany.com
    filter:
      severity: [CRITICAL]
```

## Event Journal

Every event is appended to the Transmission journal before delivery:

```
/var/acme/transmission/journal/
  events-2026-03-09.jsonl
  events-2026-03-10.jsonl
  ...
```

Journal format:

```json theme={null}
{
  "event_id": "evt_9xk2m4",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-09T15:42:31Z",
  "source": "sentinel",
  "type": "STALL_DETECTED",
  "agent": "support-agent-prod",
  "severity": "HIGH",
  "payload": { "duration_seconds": 262, "provider": "openai" },
  "delivery": {
    "agent911": { "status": "delivered", "at": "2026-03-09T15:42:31.08Z" },
    "webhooks": [
      { "name": "pagerduty", "status": "delivered", "at": "2026-03-09T15:42:31.12Z" }
    ]
  }
}
```

## Dead Letters

If a signal fails to deliver after retries, it's placed in the dead letter queue — not silently dropped:

```bash theme={null}
# View dead letter queue
acme transmission dead-letters

# Retry failed deliveries
acme transmission retry --channel webhooks

# Inspect a specific failed event
acme transmission inspect evt_9xk2m4
```

Dead letters are surfaced in the CLI and optionally in Agent911.

## Quick Start

```bash theme={null}
# Check Transmission status
acme transmission status

# View event journal (recent)
acme transmission log --tail 20

# Verify delivery for a specific agent
acme transmission verify --agent my-agent-name

# Test channel delivery
acme transmission test --channel pagerduty
```

## CLI Reference

```bash theme={null}
# Status
acme transmission status
acme transmission status --format json

# Event log
acme transmission log
acme transmission log --tail 50 --follow
acme transmission log --since 1h
acme transmission log --type STALL_DETECTED --format json

# Journal
acme transmission journal list
acme transmission journal export --date 2026-03-09 --output events.jsonl

# Delivery management
acme transmission verify --agent <name>
acme transmission dead-letters
acme transmission retry --all
acme transmission test --channel <name>

# Configuration
acme transmission config show
acme transmission config validate
```

## Integration

Transmission doesn't require configuration if you're only using ACME tools locally — it operates as an internal transport layer by default. You configure it explicitly when:

* **Connecting to external channels** (PagerDuty, Slack, email, custom webhooks)
* **Running multi-machine deployments** where components are on different hosts
* **Enabling compliance logging** that needs verifiable delivery receipts
* **Replaying events** after a disruption or missed alert window

## Pricing

Transmission is a paid product, included with the [Operator Bundle](/products/operator-bundle) or available standalone.

See [Pricing](/pricing) for current rates.

## Next Steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Agent911" icon="tower-broadcast" href="/products/agent911/overview">
    Primary consumer of Transmission signals — the unified control plane.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Sentinel" icon="shield" href="/products/sentinel/overview">
    Primary producer of runtime detection events.
  </Card>

  <Card title="SphinxGate" icon="shield-check" href="/products/sphinxgate/overview">
    Routing anomalies are routed through Transmission to consumers.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Operator Bundle" icon="box" href="/products/operator-bundle">
    Transmission is included in the full Operator Bundle.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>