> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vumasign.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # List envelopes, newest first, optionally filtered by status or by your reference. > `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}` reads one envelope by an id you already hold; this is how you find out which ids exist. The webhook delivery ladder gives up after 7 attempts, so an integrator who dropped a delivery has no way to learn what was missed except by asking here. Walked by keyset cursor rather than by offset, for the same reason `GET /api/v1/templates` is: this list is ordered newest first, so an envelope created between page 1 and page 2 would shift every row down under an offset, and a caller would receive one row twice and never see another. ⚠️ `cursor` IS OPAQUE. It is the last envelope’s `id` in clear, but that is an implementation detail rather than a promise — pass back exactly the `next_cursor` a previous page gave you and never construct one by hand. A well-formed uuid naming no envelope of yours (yours or another organisation’s — this endpoint cannot tell the two apart, and does not try) is refused rather than answered with an empty page, for the same reason an unknown `status` is below: an empty page reads as "you have none", which is the single hardest defect class to notice because it looks exactly like data. EACH ROW IS A SUMMARY, not the full `Envelope` `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}` returns — no recipients, no delivery state. Read one envelope in full once you know which one you want. RECONCILING A LOST REQUEST IS ONE CALL WITH `?reference=`. Set a `reference` of your own when you create an envelope, and if you never learn what that request did, list by it: a row means it was created, no row means it was not. Make your references unique if you want exactly one — we do not. ## OpenAPI ````yaml /openapi.json get /api/v1/envelopes openapi: 3.1.0 info: title: Vumasign API version: 0.1.0 description: >- The Vumasign API. South African e-signature: templates, the addresses an integration writes values to, an idempotent send, and webhooks. **This document describes what exists today and nothing else.** It is not a roadmap, and there is deliberately no entry here for anything that has not shipped — a spec you can generate a client from and then discover was aspirational is worse than no spec at all. ## Authentication Authorization: Bearer vsk_live_… One header, one step. Keys are minted in Settings. `vsk_live_` and `vsk_test_` are different keys; the prefix is stored in clear so a leaked key is greppable and traceable to an organisation, while the secret is stored only as a hash. ## Errors Every refusal the API returns deliberately, at every status, is `{ "error": { "code", "message" } }`, and such a response is a failure **if and only if** it carries an `error` key — that test is correct even for a client that ignores the status line. An unexpected server failure may not have this shape: treat a 5xx without an `error` key as an `internal_error`, which is retryable. `code` is the contract and is stable forever; `message` is prose for a developer reading a log and may be reworded in any release. The root of this document carries **`x-error-codes`**: the closed enum, with `status`, `retryable`, `backoff`, `emitted` and `guidance` for each code. Branch on that rather than on our prose. ## Rate limits **600 requests a minute on any paid plan, 60 on the free plan — and a test key gets the same number as a live one.** Per key, not per organisation, so a batch job and an interactive integration can be given a key each and neither can starve the other. The ceiling follows the PLAN rather than the kind of key, because the plan is what says whether this is production traffic or somebody evaluating us. On the API plan it is sized so that no honest workload meets it: a thousand envelopes with a status read each is two thousand requests, which is three and a half minutes rather than seventeen. The sandbox deliberately gets the *same* number rather than a larger one — an integration that passes in rehearsal is then an integration that passes live, and your `429` handling is exercised where meeting a `429` is free. Every successful authenticated response carries `RateLimit-Limit`, `RateLimit-Remaining` and `RateLimit-Reset` (seconds until the window closes, at most 60). Read them on your successes and you will never need to be refused. A 429 carries them too, and additionally carries `Retry-After`, which you should honour. A 401 carries none of them; a 403 may not, depending on whether it was decided before the request was counted. Each operation's responses say which others do. ⚠️ **A refused request still counts.** Retrying inside the window pushes the counter higher rather than holding it at the ceiling — which is why the backoff in `x-error-codes` is exponential and why `Retry-After` is worth reading rather than guessing at. ⚠️ The limits are **per minute**, and the window is fixed rather than sliding. Spending a whole window at the end of one minute and a whole window at the start of the next is possible; it is bounded at two windows' worth, which is a burst rather than an incident. ## Webhooks Register an endpoint with `POST /api/v1/webhooks`; the response carries the signing secret, **once**. The root of this document carries **`x-webhooks`**: the body we POST, the signature recipe (including the two mistakes that make a verifier look correct and be worthless), the published retry ladder, and the auto-disable rule. Read that before writing a receiver. ## What is not here yet No organisation-level email exists, so an auto-disabled webhook endpoint is discovered by polling rather than by being told. There is no way to change an envelope after it is created and before it is sent — `PATCH /v1/envelopes/{id}` is designed and not built — so a draft is created complete or not at all. Both are stated because a gap named is a gap somebody can plan around. ⚠️ **The rate limit above counts authenticated requests only.** A request carrying no key, or a key we cannot recognise, is refused before any counter is touched — a per-key ceiling cannot defend against a caller who has not presented a key, and pretending otherwise would be a promise we could not keep. That half belongs to the edge rather than to this API. (This section has twice described as missing something that now exists: the `uri` on every webhook body, which was `null` until `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}` gave it somewhere to point, and the rate limiter, which nothing enforced until the per-key ceiling above. Both were named here as gaps first, which is the point of naming them.) servers: - url: https://app.vumasign.com security: - ApiKey: [] tags: - name: Templates description: >- A template is a document with its signing roles and field placements authored once. Every envelope is made from one, or from a one-off pack. - name: Documents description: >- The pages of a template’s documents, served as PDF so that a client which has to show the paper can do so without rendering it itself. - name: Envelopes description: >- An envelope is one sending of a document to named people. Creating one is not sending it: a draft emails nobody until it is sent. - name: Webhooks description: >- Endpoints we POST signed events to when an envelope changes, with the health of each endpoint and a secret you can rotate without a gap. - name: Specification description: >- This document, served without a credential so that anybody can read what the API does before they hold a key. paths: /api/v1/envelopes: get: tags: - Envelopes summary: >- List envelopes, newest first, optionally filtered by status or by your reference. description: >- `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}` reads one envelope by an id you already hold; this is how you find out which ids exist. The webhook delivery ladder gives up after 7 attempts, so an integrator who dropped a delivery has no way to learn what was missed except by asking here. Walked by keyset cursor rather than by offset, for the same reason `GET /api/v1/templates` is: this list is ordered newest first, so an envelope created between page 1 and page 2 would shift every row down under an offset, and a caller would receive one row twice and never see another. ⚠️ `cursor` IS OPAQUE. It is the last envelope’s `id` in clear, but that is an implementation detail rather than a promise — pass back exactly the `next_cursor` a previous page gave you and never construct one by hand. A well-formed uuid naming no envelope of yours (yours or another organisation’s — this endpoint cannot tell the two apart, and does not try) is refused rather than answered with an empty page, for the same reason an unknown `status` is below: an empty page reads as "you have none", which is the single hardest defect class to notice because it looks exactly like data. EACH ROW IS A SUMMARY, not the full `Envelope` `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}` returns — no recipients, no delivery state. Read one envelope in full once you know which one you want. RECONCILING A LOST REQUEST IS ONE CALL WITH `?reference=`. Set a `reference` of your own when you create an envelope, and if you never learn what that request did, list by it: a row means it was created, no row means it was not. Make your references unique if you want exactly one — we do not. operationId: listEnvelopes parameters: - name: limit in: query required: false description: >- ⚠️ A VALUE OUTSIDE THE RANGE IS REFUSED, NOT CLAMPED, for the same reason `GET /api/v1/templates` refuses one: a caller who asks for 1000 and receives 100 has a working integration reading their whole account in ten times the requests they budgeted, and nothing anywhere says so. schema: type: integer description: How many envelopes to return. minimum: 1 maximum: 100 default: 25 - name: cursor in: query required: false description: >- The `next_cursor` from the previous page. Omit it to start at the newest envelope. Opaque — see above. schema: type: string format: uuid description: An envelope id to resume after. - name: status in: query required: false description: >- ⚠️ AN UNKNOWN VALUE IS REFUSED, NOT ANSWERED WITH AN EMPTY PAGE. A typo — `"complete"` for `"completed"` — would otherwise read as "you have none", which is data-shaped and is exactly the failure this refusal exists to avoid. Omit it to list every status. schema: type: string enum: - draft - sent - partially_signed - completed - declined - voided - expired description: Restrict the list to one status. - name: reference in: query required: false description: >- Only envelopes whose `reference` is exactly this — the one call that tells you whether a create whose answer you lost made anything. Compared in Unicode NFC, whichever form you send it in; case and whitespace are significant. Combines with `status` and `cursor`, and the matches are newest first like the rest of the list. ⚠️ MORE THAN ONE ROW CAN MATCH. A reference is not unique unless you made it so. ⚠️ AN EMPTY OR OVER-LONG VALUE IS REFUSED, NOT ANSWERED — an empty `?reference=` is not "no filter", and a value no reference can be would otherwise answer "nothing was created". schema: type: string minLength: 1 examples: - hire-2026-0917 description: >- The `reference` you set on create: at most 255 UTF-16 code units once composed to NFC, as JavaScript counts string length: most characters count as one, some (outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, such as most emoji) count as two. No `maxLength` is declared, because JSON Schema counts code points and would admit a value the server refuses. responses: '200': description: >- A page of envelope summaries, newest first, with the cursor for the next. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/EnvelopeList' description: The page. examples: example: summary: The last page value: data: - id: 01960000-0000-4000-8000-0000000000e5 title: Employment contract status: sent template_id: 01960000-0000-4000-8000-0000000007e1 reference: hire-2026-0917 created_at: '2026-09-02T09:00:00.000Z' sent_at: '2026-09-02T09:05:00.000Z' has_more: false next_cursor: null headers: RateLimit-Limit: description: >- How many requests this key may make per minute: 600 on any paid plan and 60 on the free plan, the same in both environments. Per key, not per organisation — a second key has its own allowance. ⚠️ READ IT RATHER THAN ASSUMING IT: it is the number the database applied to this request, so it is right even when this description is out of date. schema: type: integer description: Requests permitted in the current minute. RateLimit-Remaining: description: >- How many of them are left, this one already counted. Zero on the request that is refused, and zero on every further request of that minute — ⚠️ a refused request still counts. schema: type: integer description: Requests remaining in the current minute. RateLimit-Reset: description: >- Seconds until the current minute closes and the allowance returns. At most 60, which is what makes the published exponential backoff converge in about six doublings rather than eleven. schema: type: integer description: Seconds until the window resets. '400': description: >- `invalid_request` — The request is malformed, or breaks a rule about its own shape: a body that is not JSON or does not match the operation’s schema (a missing or mistyped property, a value out of range), a document that is not a PDF or a Word file we can read, a text tag that cannot be placed, an `Idempotency-Key` that is present but not a valid key, a query parameter outside its range, or a cursor that names nothing. The `message` says which, and for a body names the property path (`recipients[0].email`) — there is no separate `param` field. Fix the request; retrying it unchanged will fail identically. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '401': description: >- `unauthenticated` — The credential was absent, unreadable, unknown, wrong or revoked — this answer is deliberately identical for all of them, so it cannot be used to probe which keys exist. Retrying the same request changes nothing. Check the key in Settings or issue a new one. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '403': description: >- `forbidden` — The key is valid and the organisation’s plan does not grant what this operation does. Nothing about the credential needs to change, and it is deliberately MORE specific than 401 because the caller has already proved they hold the key. TWO SITUATIONS PRODUCE IT. (1) THE PLAN EXCLUDES THE OPERATION: `POST /api/v1/templates` on the Free plan, which does not include authoring templates. A template that already exists stays readable at `GET /api/v1/templates`; authoring one needs a plan that includes templates. (2) WE CANNOT ESTABLISH WHAT THE PLAN INCLUDES, on any operation, so nothing is granted. That one is ours rather than yours, an ordinary account does not meet it, and it means ask us. `insufficient_scope` — This key is scoped and does not hold the scope this operation requires — `x-required-scope` on the operation names it, and the `WWW-Authenticate` header on the refusal repeats it (RFC 6750 §3.1). ⚠️ Retrying cannot help and neither can editing the key: scopes are fixed when a key is minted and no endpoint or screen can widen them. Issue a new key with the access it needs. A key created before scopes existed carries an empty scope list, which means EVERY capability, so this refusal cannot reach an integration that was already working. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '429': description: >- `rate_limited` — This key has spent its minute. The limit is per KEY and per minute, and it follows your PLAN rather than the kind of key — 600 requests a minute on every paid plan, 60 on the free plan, and the sandbox gets the same number as production so that an integration which passes in rehearsal passes live. Every successful authenticated response, and this one, carries `RateLimit-Limit`, `RateLimit-Remaining` and `RateLimit-Reset` (seconds), so a client can slow down before it is made to. TWO OPERATIONS ALSO ANSWER IT FOR A REASON OF THEIR OWN. `POST /api/v1/envelopes/batches` costs one request per row and is refused WHOLE when its rows do not fit what is left of the key’s minute — `RateLimit-Remaining` says how many would. `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}/documents/{position}/draft` has its own per-envelope and per-organisation ceilings on renders each minute, and the `message` says which one refused; there `Retry-After` is that ceiling’s, while the `RateLimit-*` headers still describe the key. `Retry-After` on this refusal is at most 60 and is read from the stored window rather than computed, so two of our instances refusing the same key quote the same instant. ⚠️ A REFUSED REQUEST STILL COUNTS: hammering a limit you have already exceeded pushes the counter higher rather than holding it. Honour `Retry-After`. If one key genuinely needs more throughput, issue a second one in Settings — the ceiling is a fairness and blast-radius control, not a commercial meter. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. headers: RateLimit-Limit: description: >- How many requests this key may make per minute: 600 on any paid plan and 60 on the free plan, the same in both environments. Per key, not per organisation — a second key has its own allowance. ⚠️ READ IT RATHER THAN ASSUMING IT: it is the number the database applied to this request, so it is right even when this description is out of date. schema: type: integer description: Requests permitted in the current minute. RateLimit-Remaining: description: >- How many of them are left, this one already counted. Zero on the request that is refused, and zero on every further request of that minute — ⚠️ a refused request still counts. schema: type: integer description: Requests remaining in the current minute. RateLimit-Reset: description: >- Seconds until the current minute closes and the allowance returns. At most 60, which is what makes the published exponential backoff converge in about six doublings rather than eleven. schema: type: integer description: Seconds until the window resets. Retry-After: description: >- Seconds to wait before retrying, from the stored end of the window. Always present on a 429, and never more than 60. On the per-key limit it equals `RateLimit-Reset`; a narrower limit, such as the draft render allowance, has a window of its own and may ask for a different wait. `x-error-codes` tells you to honour it; this is it. schema: type: integer description: Seconds to wait before retrying. '500': description: >- `internal_error` — Ours, not yours. ⚠️ RETRY WITH THE SAME `Idempotency-Key` YOU SENT THE FIRST TIME, on any operation that takes one — that is what makes a retry safe here, and sending a NEW key would create a second envelope or send the same one twice. The safe GETs in this document can be retried freely. (This entry used to say every operation here was a GET; the write endpoints have since shipped, and the reasoning moved with them.) content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. security: - ApiKey: [] components: schemas: EnvelopeList: type: object description: A page of envelopes, newest first, walked by keyset cursor. properties: data: type: array description: This page’s envelopes. items: $ref: '#/components/schemas/EnvelopeSummary' description: One envelope, in summary. has_more: type: boolean description: >- ⚠️ THE ANSWER, rather than something to infer. A caller inferring "more" from a full page loops one extra time on every organisation whose envelope count is an exact multiple of `limit`. next_cursor: type: - string - 'null' description: >- Pass this as `cursor` for the next page. Null exactly when `has_more` is false -- the two are computed from one expression, so a true with a null cursor cannot happen. ⚠️ OPAQUE: it is the last envelope’s `id`, but that is an implementation detail rather than a promise -- pass it back exactly as received and never construct one by hand. required: - data - has_more - next_cursor Error: type: object description: >- The body of every refusal the API returns deliberately, at every status, from every endpoint. Such a response is a failure if and only if it carries an `error` key — that test is correct even for a client that ignores the status line, which is a thing real clients do. An unexpected server failure may not have this shape: treat a 5xx without an `error` key as an `internal_error`, which is retryable. properties: error: type: object description: The refusal. Anything added in future is added INSIDE this object. properties: code: type: string description: >- A stable snake_case identifier that will never change meaning or spelling. This is the contract; branch on it. See `x-error-codes` at the root of this document for retry semantics per code. enum: - unauthenticated - forbidden - insufficient_scope - not_found - invalid_request - rate_limited - internal_error - service_unavailable - idempotency_key_required - idempotency_key_reused - request_in_progress - template_archived - template_unusable - template_has_no_fields - recipient_role_unknown - recipient_role_missing - recipient_role_duplicated - value_subject_unknown - value_address_unknown - value_not_writable - value_not_lockable - locked_answer_missing - locked_answer_unusable - cannot_be_drawn - send_allowance_exhausted - test_key_cannot_send - test_key_cannot_read_documents - test_key_cannot_mint - webhook_url_invalid - webhook_events_invalid - webhook_brand_unknown - webhook_limit_reached - api_key_owner_removed - recipient_not_embedded - recipient_not_yet_turn - recipient_cannot_sign - envelope_not_sent - envelope_not_draft - brand_has_no_embed_origins - recipient_cannot_be_embedded - batch_interrupted - brand_unknown - draft_not_available message: type: string description: >- ⚠️ PROSE FOR A DEVELOPER READING A LOG, and NOT part of the contract. It may be reworded in any release; anything that parses it is broken by design. required: - code - message required: - error EnvelopeSummary: type: object description: >- One envelope as it appears in a list: enough to recognise it and decide whether to read it in full. `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}` for its recipients and their delivery state. properties: id: type: string format: uuid description: The envelope’s id. A bare uuid. title: type: string description: >- What the signers see naming the document. Defaults to the template’s name. status: type: string enum: - draft - sent - partially_signed - completed - declined - voided - expired description: One of the statuses `?status=` filters on, below. template_id: type: - string - 'null' format: uuid description: >- The template this was made from, or `null` for a one-off created by `POST /api/v1/envelopes/one-off`, which carries the document itself and never had one. reference: type: - string - 'null' examples: - hire-2026-0917 description: >- The `reference` you set when you created it, in Unicode NFC, or `null`. In the summary so that a match found with `?reference=` needs no second read to confirm. created_at: type: string format: date-time description: ISO 8601, UTC. Also the order this list is in -- newest first. sent_at: type: - string - 'null' format: date-time description: ISO 8601, UTC. Null while it is still a draft. required: - id - title - status - template_id - reference - created_at - sent_at securitySchemes: ApiKey: type: http scheme: bearer description: >- `Authorization: Bearer vsk_live_…`. Chosen over a bespoke `X-API-KEY` header because every client, proxy and log-redaction rule already knows this one. What a key may DO is its scopes — see `x-scopes` at the root of this document and `x-required-scope` on each operation. The scope list is not written here because OpenAPI reserves a requirement’s scope array for `oauth2` and `openIdConnect` and requires it to be empty for an `http` scheme. ````