> ## 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. # Send a draft envelope to its recipients. > THE SECOND HALF OF THE CREATED-VERSUS-SENT SPLIT. `POST /api/v1/envelopes` with `"send": false` makes a draft and emails nobody; this is how that draft goes out. Two acts an integrator can separate — build the envelope when a form is submitted, send it when a human approves — which is the arrangement a one-shot create cannot express without either sending too early or holding a request open. ⚠️ A SUB-RESOURCE AND NOT `PATCH {"status": "sent"}`. Sending emails people, consumes billing allowance and writes an audit event; making that look like editing a property would make an irreversible, billable act look reversible. **200, not 201.** Nothing was created — the envelope existed before this call. A client branching on 201 to mean "store this new id" would be wrong here every time. ## The idempotency, which is the point ⚠️ `Idempotency-Key` IS REQUIRED. None of DocuSign, Dropbox Sign or BoldSign offers one on the endpoint that costs real money; this is that endpoint, and an optional guarantee is one nobody sends until they have already been burned. A REPLAY MEANS "you already sent this, and here is what happened" — the first attempt’s answer, byte for byte, with `Idempotency-Replayed: true`. Not a second send, not a resend, not a refusal. That is what makes a timeout safe to retry. A DIFFERENT ENVELOPE UNDER A USED KEY IS `idempotency_key_reused`, never a replay — including a key you already used to CREATE something. A key identifies one request. KEYS ARE REMEMBERED FOR 1 DAY, per organisation and per environment. Past that the same string is a new request — and a new request to send an envelope that has already gone out is `envelope_not_draft`, not a second send. Two mechanisms, and the second one is the database: `draft → sent` is a locked, one-way transition, so a duplicate send is impossible whatever the key says. The key decides what the second caller is TOLD. ## What it refuses A REFUSAL SENDS NOTHING AND CHANGES NOTHING. The envelope is left exactly as it was — unlike a refused `"send": true` on the create endpoint, which deletes the draft it had just built — and the idempotency key is freed, so a caller who upgrades their plan or fixes their roster retries with the same key. ⚠️ A `vsk_test_` KEY MAY SEND ONLY A SANDBOX ENVELOPE — one a test key created — and only to people it may email. A draft a live key created is refused with `test_key_cannot_send`, and so is one whose emailed recipients include an address that is neither a member of your organisation nor a confirmed test recipient (Settings → Test recipients). An `"embedded": true` recipient is never emailed and is never checked. A test send consumes no allowance. ## OpenAPI ````yaml /openapi.json post /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}/send 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/{envelopeId}/send: post: tags: - Envelopes summary: Send a draft envelope to its recipients. description: >- THE SECOND HALF OF THE CREATED-VERSUS-SENT SPLIT. `POST /api/v1/envelopes` with `"send": false` makes a draft and emails nobody; this is how that draft goes out. Two acts an integrator can separate — build the envelope when a form is submitted, send it when a human approves — which is the arrangement a one-shot create cannot express without either sending too early or holding a request open. ⚠️ A SUB-RESOURCE AND NOT `PATCH {"status": "sent"}`. Sending emails people, consumes billing allowance and writes an audit event; making that look like editing a property would make an irreversible, billable act look reversible. **200, not 201.** Nothing was created — the envelope existed before this call. A client branching on 201 to mean "store this new id" would be wrong here every time. ## The idempotency, which is the point ⚠️ `Idempotency-Key` IS REQUIRED. None of DocuSign, Dropbox Sign or BoldSign offers one on the endpoint that costs real money; this is that endpoint, and an optional guarantee is one nobody sends until they have already been burned. A REPLAY MEANS "you already sent this, and here is what happened" — the first attempt’s answer, byte for byte, with `Idempotency-Replayed: true`. Not a second send, not a resend, not a refusal. That is what makes a timeout safe to retry. A DIFFERENT ENVELOPE UNDER A USED KEY IS `idempotency_key_reused`, never a replay — including a key you already used to CREATE something. A key identifies one request. KEYS ARE REMEMBERED FOR 1 DAY, per organisation and per environment. Past that the same string is a new request — and a new request to send an envelope that has already gone out is `envelope_not_draft`, not a second send. Two mechanisms, and the second one is the database: `draft → sent` is a locked, one-way transition, so a duplicate send is impossible whatever the key says. The key decides what the second caller is TOLD. ## What it refuses A REFUSAL SENDS NOTHING AND CHANGES NOTHING. The envelope is left exactly as it was — unlike a refused `"send": true` on the create endpoint, which deletes the draft it had just built — and the idempotency key is freed, so a caller who upgrades their plan or fixes their roster retries with the same key. ⚠️ A `vsk_test_` KEY MAY SEND ONLY A SANDBOX ENVELOPE — one a test key created — and only to people it may email. A draft a live key created is refused with `test_key_cannot_send`, and so is one whose emailed recipients include an address that is neither a member of your organisation nor a confirmed test recipient (Settings → Test recipients). An `"embedded": true` recipient is never emailed and is never checked. A test send consumes no allowance. operationId: sendEnvelope parameters: - name: envelopeId in: path required: true description: The draft envelope’s `id`, as returned when it was created. schema: type: string format: uuid examples: - 01960000-0000-4000-8000-0000000000e5 description: An envelope id. - name: Idempotency-Key in: header required: true description: >- Any string that identifies this request; a UUID is the usual choice, and at most 255 characters. ⚠️ REQUIRED. Without it a timeout is unresolvable: you cannot learn whether the envelope went out, and retrying either sends it twice or tells you it is not a draft without saying who sent it. schema: type: string examples: - 01960000-0000-4000-8000-00000000ffff description: The caller’s own request identifier. responses: '200': description: >- The envelope, now `sent`. `invitation_delivered` on each recipient is what the email provider said about that invitation — `null` where none was attempted, which on a `sequential` envelope is every position after the first. ⚠️ HERE, AND ONLY HERE, `true` MEANS "THE PROVIDER ACCEPTED IT" RATHER THAN "THE PROVIDER DELIVERED IT". This response is built from the answers the provider gave while the send was running, and at that moment nobody — us or them — knows whether the message will arrive. Delivery is reported afterwards, and `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{id}` is where it shows up. If the distinction matters to you, re-read there rather than trusting this snapshot. ⚠️ A recipient still reading `pending` after a successful send is NORMAL on a sequential envelope, not a failure. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Envelope' description: The envelope, as it now stands. examples: example: summary: Sent, and accepted by the email provider value: id: 01960000-0000-4000-8000-0000000000e5 status: sent template_id: 01960000-0000-4000-8000-0000000007e1 title: Employment contract reference: hire-2026-0917 created_at: '2026-09-02T09:00:00.000Z' sent_at: '2026-09-02T09:05:00.000Z' expires_at: null recipients: - id: 01960000-0000-4000-8000-00000000005e role: Employee name: Thandi Mokoena email: thandi@example.test routing_type: sign status: sent invitation_delivered: true embedded: false external_ref: 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. `idempotency_key_required` — Send `Idempotency-Key: ` — this operation takes one and the request carried none. A distinct code from `invalid_request` because the remedy is to ADD a header, and an integrator reading it in a log should not have to work that out. (A key that is present but malformed is `invalid_request`, and its `message` names the header.) 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. '402': description: >- `send_allowance_exhausted` — ⚠️ 402, THE ONLY STATUS IN THIS API THAT NAMES MONEY. Not 403 (the credential is permitted; the plan is not) and not 429 (waiting does not help until the month turns). Upgrade the plan, or wait for the period to roll over. ⚠️ RETRYING IS POINTLESS BUT NOT HARMFUL — nothing was created, so there is no partial envelope to clean up. Only the Free plan (5 documents a month) is ever blocked, once that many documents have been sent in the month; every other plan is counted and never stopped, and a `vsk_test_` key never meets this at all because a sandbox envelope consumes no allowance to exhaust. 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. `test_key_cannot_send` — A `vsk_test_` key tried a send it may not make. TWO SITUATIONS PRODUCE IT. (1) `POST /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}/send` on an envelope a LIVE key created: sending it would email its real recipients and spend real allowance, so send it with a live key. (2) Far more often, a recipient who would be EMAILED and whose address is not one this organisation may send rehearsals to. THE RULE IS ABOUT WHO, NOT ABOUT WHETHER: a test key may email anybody who is a MEMBER of the sending organisation, and any other address that has CONFIRMED a verification link sent to it (Settings → Test recipients). Nobody else at all. So a mixed envelope — one `"embedded": true` signer in your application and one emailed counterparty — is fully rehearsable, provided that counterparty is on the list. An `"embedded": true` recipient is never checked against it, because an embedded recipient is issued no invitation and is emailed by no code path at all. ⚠️ WHY THE LIMIT EXISTS: a sandbox send consumes no billing allowance, so an unbounded one would be an unmetered way to email strangers from a free account, over a sending domain every customer shares. The message names each address that was refused. Your options are: add and verify the address; make the recipient `"embedded": true`; create the draft with `"send": false`; or send with a live key, which may email anybody. What a test key still never does is consume billing allowance or produce a sealed artefact anybody can be held to — its documents are watermarked on every page and sealed by a certificate issued for the sandbox and for nothing else, so a PDF reader reports the signature as intact and its issuer as untrusted, and everyone who receives one is told so before they can open it. `api_key_owner_removed` — The person who created this key has left the organisation, and everything the key creates or sends — an envelope, a batch, a template — is attributed to that person, who must still be a member. The key is not revoked and its reads still work, and so does managing webhooks; mint a new key from a current member and use that. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '404': description: >- `not_found` — No such resource — or none this key’s organisation can see, or one that has been archived, or an id that is not a uuid. Those four are one answer on purpose: "it exists but is not yours" is itself a disclosure. Do not retry; check the id against the list endpoint. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '409': description: >- `idempotency_key_reused` — This key was already used for a DIFFERENT request. ⚠️ The request itself may be perfectly valid — what conflicts is the key against state we already hold, which is what 409 means and why it is not a 400. Mint a new key. Do not retry with this one; it will conflict forever. `request_in_progress` — A request carrying this key has not finished. We deliberately do not block waiting for it — that would hold a connection across a send that calls an email provider N times. Retry the identical request; when the first one lands you will get its result, replayed. `envelope_not_draft` — Only a draft can be sent, and this envelope has already left draft — through this API, through the sender’s own Send button, or by being voided. ⚠️ THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF `envelope_not_sent`, and the two are not interchangeable: that one means the envelope has NOT gone out. An envelope never returns to draft, so this is terminal — read it with `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}` to see where it got to. ⚠️ If you were retrying a request that timed out, send the SAME `Idempotency-Key` instead and you will be told what the first attempt did. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '422': description: >- `recipient_role_missing` — A role that has fields on it was given nobody to fill them. Every role the template declares with work to do needs a recipient. `recipient_role_duplicated` — Two recipients were given one role that the template does not route as `cc`. Everyone on a role is served the same fields and every one of them must sign, so both would answer the same boxes and the completed envelope could never be sealed. Give each person a role of their own; several `cc` readers may share a role. Answered by the create endpoints, naming each `recipients[i].role` that holds the role, and by the send endpoint for a draft saved before this was refused. `template_has_no_fields` — There are no fields, so the envelope would ask nobody to do anything. From a template, place at least one field on it in the editor. On `POST /api/v1/envelopes/one-off`, which has no template, the document you sent carries no field: add a text tag to it, or send `fields`. A batch refuses every row for this, because every row shares the template. `locked_answer_missing` — A field on this envelope is locked, required and carries no answer — three statements that cannot all be honoured. A locked answer is the sender’s, so the signer is refused if they supply one and the completeness check does not ask them for it; once sent, nobody could fill the box and it would seal blank. ⚠️ THE LOCK MAY NOT HAVE COME FROM YOUR REQUEST — it can be authored on the template — so the message names the FIELD rather than a `values[i]` path. Send a value for that address, send `{"value": "", "locked": false}` to hand it back to the signer, or have the template make it optional. ⚠️ THE SAME CODE ALSO MEANS A QUESTION NOBODY LEFT COULD ANSWER. Grouped tickboxes — a Race or Gender question — are never individually `required`; the question’s own `min_selected` is what makes it compulsory. Lock every option of such a question with no tick in any of them and it asks for more answers than remain within anybody’s reach, which is the same unsatisfiable sentence and refuses the same way. There the message names the QUESTION, and the remedies are to tick one of the locked options, unlock one, or lower the question’s minimum. `locked_answer_unusable` — A field on this envelope carries a locked answer the field itself will not accept: a value its validation rule rejects, one its input format cannot carry, one longer than the printed cells of a comb or holding a character one of those cells does not accept, a `date` that is not a calendar day, or a dropdown answer that is not among the options it offers. ⚠️ A `date` DRAWN AS PRINTED CELLS IS MEASURED IN ITS OWN SPELLING: it holds the digits its boxes print — `15092026`, not `2026-09-15` — and those digits must still name a day that exists, read in the order the field’s label states (`Date of birth (DD/MM/YYYY)`). ⚠️ THIS IS NOT `locked_answer_missing` — that one is a box with NO answer. This is a box with an answer nobody can use: a locked answer is the sender’s, the signer may not change it, and their very first save would be refused over it on an envelope nobody can edit any more. Refused here so that it is still a draft. ⚠️ THE ANSWER MAY NOT HAVE COME FROM YOUR REQUEST — a lock and its value can be authored on the template, and a rule can be tightened after the answer was fixed — so the message names the FIELD rather than a `values[i]` path. Send a value that satisfies the field, send `{"locked": false}` to hand the box back to the signer, or change the rule on the template. ⚠️ THE SAME CODE ALSO MEANS A QUESTION THE SENDER ANSWERED MORE TIMES THAN IT PERMITS, AND THEN NO FIELD RULE IS BROKEN AT ALL. Grouped tickboxes — a Marital status question at `max_selected: 1` — can each carry a perfectly good locked tick while together they assert more than the question allows; every one of them would seal, side by side, on a question that says fewer can be true, and the signer may clear none of them. There the message names the QUESTION rather than a field, and sending a field-valid value resolves nothing because every value already is one. The remedies are to untick one of the locked options, to unlock one so the signer chooses, or to raise the question’s `max_selected`. ⚠️ AND THAT LAST ONE IS NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN SEND: `max_selected` is published by `GET /api/v1/templates/{templateId}` and NO ENDPOINT HERE SETS IT — a question’s bounds are authored on the template, and its `id` is a join key within that response rather than an address this API accepts. ⚠️ AND ONE ADDRESS MAY TICK EVERY OPTION AT ONCE, which is the commonest way a request reaches this: the options of one question often share a `data_key` (all six of Race are `race`), and a `values` entry fills EVERY box at its address — so `{"value": "true", "locked": true}` there locks a tick into all of them. Give the options their own addresses on the template if you need to fix exactly one. `cannot_be_drawn` — A value, a name or a title contains something the sealer cannot draw into the PDF. Asked BEFORE the send rather than discovered after everybody has signed. The message names which string. 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: Envelope: type: object description: 'An envelope: a template instantiated with real people and real values.' properties: id: type: string format: uuid description: The envelope’s id. A bare uuid. status: type: string description: >- `draft` or `sent` from this endpoint. Later states arrive as people act. template_id: type: - string - 'null' format: uuid description: >- The template this was made from, or `null` when there was none — an envelope created by `POST /api/v1/envelopes/one-off` carries the document itself and never had a template. Branch on `null`, never on the empty string. title: type: string description: >- What the signers see naming the document. Defaults to the template’s name. reference: type: - string - 'null' examples: - hire-2026-0917 description: >- The `reference` you set when you created it, in Unicode NFC, or `null`. Not unique, and never changed after creation. created_at: type: string format: date-time description: ISO 8601, UTC. sent_at: type: - string - 'null' format: date-time description: ISO 8601, UTC. Null while it is a draft. expires_at: type: - string - 'null' format: date-time description: >- ISO 8601, UTC. Null when this envelope has no deadline, which is the default. Read back from the stored value rather than echoed, so an offset you sent comes back as the same instant in UTC. recipients: type: array description: In routing order. items: $ref: '#/components/schemas/EnvelopeRecipient' description: One recipient. required: - id - status - template_id - title - reference - created_at - sent_at - expires_at - recipients 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 EnvelopeRecipient: type: object description: One recipient of an envelope, as it stands. properties: id: type: string format: uuid description: >- This recipient. Published where a template ROLE’s id deliberately is not, because a recipient has no natural key — one person may hold two roles and two people may hold one. role: type: string description: The template role they were given. name: type: string description: As stored, after normalisation. email: type: string format: email description: As stored, after normalisation. routing_type: type: string enum: - sign - approve - cc description: >- ⚠️ FROM THE TEMPLATE, NEVER FROM THE REQUEST. Whether a role signs, approves or is copied in is part of the layout (§3), and a caller who could override it could send a document whose signature boxes nobody will ever be asked to fill. status: type: string description: >- `recipients.status` verbatim. ⚠️ `pending` AFTER A SUCCESSFUL SEND IS NORMAL: a sequential template invites only the first position and holds the rest back until it empties. invitation_delivered: type: - boolean - 'null' description: >- Whether the email provider reports the invitation as DELIVERED. `null` when none was attempted — a draft, a `cc`, an embedded recipient, or a position held back. ⚠️ ON A READ, THIS NO LONGER ANSWERS `true` AS SOON AS THE SEND RETURNS, and it used to. Accepting a message and delivering it are different events: we now record delivery only when the provider tells us it happened, on the provider's clock. A just-sent invitation therefore reads `false` on `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{id}` and turns `true` seconds to minutes later. ⚠️ THE ONE EXCEPTION IS THE RESPONSE TO `POST .../send` ITSELF, where `true` means the provider ACCEPTED the message — the only thing anybody knows while the send is still running. That operation’s response description says so at length. The same recipient can therefore read `true` from the send and `false` from a read a second later; the read is the one to decide from. ⚠️ `false` IS NOT A BOUNCE. It covers both "the provider refused the send" and "we have not been told yet", and you cannot tell those apart from this field — do not surface it to a human as a failure. `null` is the only value that has never changed meaning: nothing was attempted. embedded: type: boolean description: >- Whether this recipient is reached by a minted signing URL instead of by email. ⚠️ RETURNED HERE PRECISELY BECAUSE DocuSign DOES NOT RETURN THEIRS: `clientUserId` is absent from their list endpoints, so an integrator who lost their own record of which recipients were embedded has no way to ask. When this is true, `invitation_delivered` is always `null` — nothing was attempted, and nothing was meant to be. external_ref: type: - string - 'null' description: >- Whatever you supplied at creation, normalised to Unicode NFC, or `null`: compare it in NFC, not byte for byte. Opaque to us and joined on by nothing — it is here so a webhook or this response can be matched to your own record of the same human without a side table. required: - id - role - name - email - routing_type - status - invitation_delivered - embedded - external_ref 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. ````