Diagnose third-party sales agents

When your storefront uses a third-party AdCP-compatible sales agent as an inventory source, Apostra can help you answer two different questions:

Is the source set up correctly? Check source status, credentials, advertised capabilities, and compliance.
What happened on recent buyer traffic? Inspect recent AdCP calls, responses, task statuses, and failures for that source.

Use both. A source can be configured correctly but still fail a specific buyer request, and a failed buyer request can come from a valid business rejection rather than a broken connection.

Start with the connection

The normal Inventory source page starts with the Source name, its connection status, the saved HTTPS endpoint when it is safe to display, whether required authentication is configured, and when it was last checked. It gives one clear next action: refresh the connection when the page asks for fresh evidence. A completed connection refresh is the newest connection evidence on the page. If it passes, the Summary says that it passed even when an older stored health record reported an error. If the older record is all that is available, Summary labels it as stale connection evidence, shows when it was checked, and asks the named owner to refresh it. Summary shows one next action and its owner. Use Technical details for product-path, wholesale, reconciliation, failure, and trace explanations. The page never shows a saved secret. It also does not treat an active Source as provider approval, Agent certification, or permission to transact. Those are separate decisions with their own status and next action. Use Technical details when you need source tests, protocol calls, transport evidence, tool declarations, or a diagnostic handoff. Those details help a developer investigate a problem; they are not routine publisher setup. Technical details also shows Request signing, read from the request_signing block in your agent’s last get_adcp_capabilities response. It lists each category your agent declares: the operations it requires signed (required_for), the ones it checks without rejecting unsigned calls (warn_for), and the ones it verifies when a signature is present (supported_for), including the matching protocol_methods_* names. An operation listed in more than one category appears only in the strictest, following AdCP’s precedence. When the agent states a covers_content_digest policy, the row also shows whether signatures must, must not, or may cover the request body. If the agent declares no signing, the row says so. Request signing is not a credential and has no setting on the Source. Apostra signs the operations your agent lists. See Verifying our signed requests for the keys and the identity to trust. After you change the declaration, refresh capabilities so the page shows it. Setup, request eligibility, and health are separate. Apostra sends a discovery request when the Source is set up, not paused, mapped to an eligible Agent, and compatible with that request. Degraded or erroring health remains visible but does not automatically stop requests. A serious health problem may lead an operator to record a separate, reasoned ineligibility decision.

Source health

Choose Source health on the Inventory source page to see the source health object for that source, one section at a time:

Source: the seller account, the source and its connection type, the Agent that powers it and its observed revision, and whether buyer requests reach it, with the reason codes when they do not.
Health by operation: one row for each AdCP operation Apostra performs against the source, with its status, call counts when they were read, the last success, the last failure, and who acts on it. An operation nothing has observed reads Not observed.
Diagnosis: each finding with its severity, the operation it is about, who acts, the next step, and a troubleshooting link when one exists.
Open operations: each operation still waiting at this source, who it is waiting on, since when, and the exact thing it is waiting for. A creative you have not yet approved is not listed here, because no source receives it before your review; it waits in your creative reviews instead. When the diagnostics response does not include open operations, the section says they are not available rather than showing an empty list.

The page does not show write outcomes, because the seller diagnostics read does not return them. The window selector at the top of the page sets the window the counts cover.

A timeout is not an error response

A typed timeout means the call did not finish inside the observer’s budget. It does not mean the Source returned an error, is unreachable, or is currently unhealthy. For example, a get_products call can exceed a 30-second buyer window and then complete successfully in 35.7 seconds when observed with a longer 45- or 60-second budget. A fresh test with the same 30-second budget may simply reproduce that budget mismatch; compare it with a 60-second observation before diagnosing reachability. The response exposes the mechanism as condition: "timeout", separately from the diagnostic impact (status: "degraded"). A completed error response uses condition: "error_response"; a connection failure uses condition: "transport_error". Reporting has its own health axis, so an inventory observation timeout does not make healthy reporting unhealthy. None of these health observations changes request eligibility by itself. Human-facing Source Health surfaces use one vocabulary: Healthy, Degraded, Erroring, and Unknown. The sourceHealth object in the response uses the same words: each operation’s status is healthy, degraded, or erroring, and null (shown as Unknown) when nothing has observed it. The deprecated source.health and source.capabilityHealth fields keep the older unhealthy value for wire compatibility; present that value as Erroring. Do not infer the failure mechanism from that status. Read condition: timeout is observer-budget exhaustion and is degraded evidence, while error_response means the Source actually returned an error. Diagnostics keep three evidence types separate:

A source test is an explicit sandbox test against the selected source.
A source call is an observed protocol exchange with the selected source, such as get_capabilities or an Agent-supplied get_products request.
A storefront buyer-path or composition run describes work at the storefront layer. It is not evidence that the selected source was called unless a source exchange is attached to it.

Physical transport evidence

transportRequests is the bounded, redacted record of outbound protocol attempts. It is separate from logical recentActivity and the health verdict: one logical operation can create several physical requests. Requests to every sales agent Apostra calls are eligible for this record, including the one Apostra runs for an ad server source. For an ad server source, destinationOrigin is null because the request goes to an Apostra-internal service rather than a public endpoint. The record can be incomplete. When Apostra’s diagnostics storage is under heavy load, it drops transport rows rather than slow down live requests, so a missing row does not prove that no request was sent. For media-buy creates and updates, groupId identifies the application operation and each SDK session keeps its own debugId. Local stages show setup and whether mutation dispatch was attempted. physicalRequestCount excludes local stages; logicalOperationCount counts accepted operation envelopes. If mutation_not_dispatched is present, Apostra stopped locally and no remote mutation request or response was recorded. This does not establish that the remote media buy is unchanged. An authoritative readback is required. This distinction matters for no_ingredients: a composition run can stop at the storefront before it calls the external sales agent. That failure must not be shown as a failed source call or source test. On the Agent-supplied product path, the storefront sends the brief to the external agent’s get_products; that call uses the agent’s finished products and does not require ingredients.

Read seller readiness without combining unrelated results

For a source linked to an Agent, Source Diagnostics shows three separate results:

Marketplace availability says whether the storefront can currently transact. Resolve any listed blocker in Seller Setup.
Agent certification applies to the Agent’s current revision. If it needs attention, open the Agent page and complete its certification work. A stale certification does not by itself change the marketplace result shown here.
Source health is the latest observed condition for this exact source. When it is degraded, erroring, or unknown, open Setup and refresh capabilities before changing the source. That refresh checks the endpoint, credentials, and declarations; it does not prove product discovery or a media-buy lifecycle.

Use validation when you need new no-spend evidence for the exact source. A successful source check is not a replacement for the storefront’s own availability decision or for current Agent certification. If the source has no organization-owned Sales Agent, Source Diagnostics offers the Create Agent Task for a self-operated replacement and an Apostra support route for a Partner connection. A revoked Partner mapping cannot be restored from this page: Apostra coordinates that cross-organization connection. For external sales-agent sources, also separate live source health from component-cache health. Live health answers whether Agent-supplied discovery or media-buy calls reached the source and completed. Component-cache health answers whether Apostra can read the source’s raw products/components for merchandising without calling the source during buyer-request composition. Cache complaints usually mean the source does not support a usable component response, returned invalid/missing product metadata, has an errored or cold cache state, or cannot refresh because of auth or reachability. Stale-but-usable cached rows are not automatically a failure; they are valid composition inputs when the storefront allows hard-stale OK cache reads. Soft-refresh age is handled automatically by Apostra’s stale-while-revalidate cache path; it does not create a seller action item. A cache complaint does not by itself mean live the Agent-supplied product path is down. Apostra does not make wholesale product or signal catalog requests to every external sales agent. They run only when the Source’s explicit product contract includes the Storefront-built path and the Agent reports AdCP 3.1+ support. An Agent-supplied Source focuses on live buyer-request activity instead of component-cache readiness. Only wholesale products are composition inputs; ordinary finished products are not reclassified as ingredients. Managed ad-server Sources have a fixed wholesale contract because their raw inventory must be turned into products. Neither product path is separately monetized. When a seller-operated source stays unhealthy long enough to trigger a proactive Murph alert, the alert links directly to this diagnostics surface with the affected source selected. Open that link first, then use the recent activity and developer handoff sections for the partner-safe debug ID, task ID, operation ID, and correlation headers behind the failing calls.

Endpoint

GET /api/v2/storefront/inventory-sources/{sourceId}/diagnostics Returns seller-facing diagnostics for one third-party sales-agent or modular inventory source. The response combines the current source setup, recent AdCP activity, test-run evidence, latency rollups, error rates, discovery participation, demand impact, and developer handoff identifiers. New outbound calls include a partner-safe x-scope3-debug-id that also appears in the diagnostics handoff.

Buyer exclusion-list impact

discoveryParticipation reports a bounded, source-owned account of products removed from anonymous buyer discoveries because one of that product’s properties matched the buyer’s exclusion list. When present, advertiserPropertyExcludedProductCount is the number of products removed in the selected window and advertiserPropertyExclusionRequestCount is the number of affected discovery requests. advertiserPropertyExcludedProducts lists up to 25 recent product IDs, names, and matching domains. advertiserPropertyExclusionDataAvailable is false when this auxiliary projection cannot be read. Treat its counts as unavailable rather than zero in that case. This derived evidence is retained for 31 days. That preserves the maximum 30-day diagnostics window while keeping the seller-visible observation store bounded. The retention worker removes observations after that window. Observations also cascade away immediately when their inventory source is deleted, but not when a discovery session is deleted. This is diagnostic evidence, not a routing or eligibility decision. It does not reveal the buyer or advertiser, any other entries in the buyer’s list, or other sellers’ products. The matching domains are only the intersection with this Source’s own product properties. demandImpact repeats the bounded affected-request count as buyerRequestsAffectedByAdvertiserPropertyExclusions for operational impact reporting.

Canonical reporting evidence

The response’s reporting field is an independent projection of the canonical reporting ledger for this exact Source. It does not derive reporting health from generic Source activity or copy one Source’s result onto its Agent.

availability says whether canonical reporting evidence is supported or unsupported. It is null when no value was observed.
health uses waiting, healthy, delayed, action_required, and complete.
sourceProvenance: acquired appears only when an immutable acquisition plan proves the Source attribution. null means that proof was not observed, not that the Agent lacks reporting capability.
obligations preserves period, expected time, required finality, coverage, missing-first-report state, issue ownership, and latest revision evidence.
lastSuccessfulRevision, dataThrough, nextExpectedAt, and freshness describe the most recent usable reporting state.
Truncation flags mark bounded obligation and related-media-buy collections. A response that exceeds the obligation-row limit returns nullable aggregate reporting state instead of projecting health from partial evidence.

A reporting-ledger read failure does not erase otherwise-valid Source diagnostics or change inventory health. In that case reporting returns a nullable projection. The action descriptors are read-only integration seams and remain unavailable with reason: adapter_pending until their typed adapters are connected.

Local synthetic Demo evidence

A code-owned demo-* source under the authenticated Storefront’s active, unexpired Demo lease uses local synthetic verification. Its persisted recipe is the source evidence, so Seller Setup reports all nine required source steps ready and Source Diagnostics labels it Local synthetic. No vendor endpoint, credentials, protocol trace, capability refresh, or live source test exists for this path. This classification is read-only. It does not create, extend, or reactivate a Demo lease, change capabilities, or publish synthetic inventory. A missing or expired lease, a different tenant, or a source without a demo-* recipe uses the ordinary live-source verification model. To run a direct source test, use the shared storefront operation run_inventory_source_discovery_test, backed by: POST /api/v2/storefront/inventory-sources/{sourceId}/tests/discovery This source-scoped operation calls the selected external sales agent’s get_products with a read-only brief. It creates no media buy, spends nothing, and does not test reporting or webhooks. If your agent’s get_adcp_capabilities declares account.required_for_products with buyer-declared accounts (require_operator_auth: false), the test buys as a test persona shaped like real demand: the brand test-brand.apostra.com, the agency test-agency.apostra.com as operator, and Apostra as the agent. It first calls sync_accounts for that account, using a billing mode from your supported_billing, then sends the account with get_products. If the sync_accounts call itself fails (for example, it times out), the test still sends the account so the result reflects your agent’s own get_products answer, and the result says the registration failed. The test is marked as test traffic the way AdCP marks it: sandbox: true on the account, when your capabilities declare account.sandbox: true. AdCP has no request-level test marker, so if your agent doesn’t support sandbox accounts, the test uses a live account and its result says so. Either way it sends only a no-spend get_products. If your agent assigns its own account IDs (require_operator_auth: true), the test sends no account and reports that one is required, because it has no operator credential to use. Live buyer requests always carry the buyer’s own brand and the operator acting for it. Its outcome, product count, step, and available debug identifiers are recorded as a durable source test run, so the result remains available from list_agent_test_runs and in Source Diagnostics.

Refresh current health evidence

If Source Diagnostics shows stale or conflicting health evidence, ask Murph to refresh the affected inventory source, or call refresh_inventory_source_health from an MCP client with that source’s sourceId. No refresh is needed when diagnostics does not request verification. The operation sends one no-spend get_products request to that source. It does not change source configuration, create a media buy, or test reporting or webhooks. Its response returns the timestamped outcome, recorded run, task, operation, debug, and correlation IDs, and refreshed storefront readiness. The same evidence appears in Source Diagnostics. MCP hosts open the same Source Diagnostics app through the typed open_source_diagnostics tool. The widget and its actions use shared MCP contracts rather than sending a new chat message to Murph.

Run the full Sales Agent validation

Test & certify keeps a selected Source check separate from protected transaction validation. When you select a Source, the validation checks that Source’s connection and discovery path. It still requires an authorized target and the normal account checks. Selecting a Source does not create an isolated provider fixture or make a blocked Source runnable. Leaving the Source selector empty uses the protected validation path for both brief-only and transaction profiles. That path first needs a current registered Agent deployment before it can prepare its test target. A missing deployment is shown as setup work; a fixture is checked only after that target is available. A separate Buyer Account is optional. If you omit it, validation stays with the owning Seller Account. Omitting it does not create a Buyer Account or remove target ownership, authorization, or test-setup checks. If you select a reachable Buyer Account, validation continues to use that account. Choosing No auth completes credential setup for a public endpoint; there is no secret to submit. Murph inspects the saved Source and continues to diagnostics instead of reopening the credential form. A validation window with no qualifying calls remains untested, not failed. If your sales agent later starts requiring a credential, you can add one to the same Source without creating a new one. Open the Source’s diagnostics, expand Connection details, and choose Add credentials. If a connection check fails with an authentication error, the same action appears at the top of the page. In the form, pick Bearer token or API key and enter the secret; saving switches the Source from No auth and stores the secret in one step. The Source keeps its status, and you can run Check connection afterwards to confirm the agent accepts it. To do the same through the API, send authenticationType and auth together to Update inventory source.

Request

curl "https://api.apostra.com/api/v2/storefront/inventory-sources/retail-adcp/diagnostics?windowHours=24" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SCOPE3_API_KEY"

curl -X POST "https://api.apostra.com/api/v2/storefront/inventory-sources/retail-adcp/tests/discovery" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SCOPE3_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"brief":"Return representative products available to a US buyer."}'

Parameters

Field	Type	Required	Notes
`sourceId`	string (path)	Yes	Storefront-scoped inventory source ID.
`windowHours`	integer (query)	No	Lookback window for activity and test-run rollups. Defaults to the service window, minimum `1`, maximum `720` (30 days).

Response

{
  "source": {
    "id": "42",
    "sourceId": "retail-adcp",
    "name": "Retail AdCP Agent",
    "executionType": "AGENT",
    "status": "ACTIVE",
    "agentId": "agent_retail",
    "endpointUrl": "https://sales-agent.example.com/mcp",
    "protocol": "MCP",
    "auth": {
      "type": "bearer",
      "required": true,
      "configured": true
    },
    "capabilities": {
      "tools": ["get_products", "create_media_buy"],
      "products": "supported",
      "createMediaBuy": "supported",
      "updateMediaBuy": "unknown",
      "signals": "unsupported"
    },
    "productMode": {
      "agentCapabilityUid": "4eb9d7be-e005-42af-9d26-56c119671aad",
      "declaredAgentMode": "BOTH",
      "bindingSelection": "BOTH",
      "effectiveMode": "BOTH",
      "reasons": [],
      "paths": [
        { "path": "WHOLESALE", "ready": true, "reasons": [] },
        { "path": "COMPOSING", "ready": true, "reasons": [] }
      ]
    },
    "health": {
      "status": "healthy",
      "lastError": null,
      "lastErrorCode": null,
      "lastErrorAt": null,
      "lastSuccessAt": "2026-06-18T12:45:00.000Z",
      "lastCheckedAt": "2026-06-18T12:50:00.000Z"
    },
    "capabilityHealth": {
      "inventory": {
        "status": "healthy",
        "observations": [
          {
            "observer": "get_products",
            "status": "healthy",
            "previousStatus": "degraded",
            "condition": null,
            "cause": null,
            "detail": null,
            "owner": "seller",
            "observedAt": "2026-06-18T12:45:00.000Z",
            "lastOkAt": "2026-06-18T12:45:00.000Z"
          }
        ]
      },
      "reporting": {
        "status": null,
        "observations": []
      }
    }
  },
  "window": {
    "hours": 24,
    "startedAt": "2026-06-17T13:00:00Z",
    "endedAt": "2026-06-18T13:00:00Z",
    "sampledActivityCount": 37,
    "activityTruncated": false,
    "sampledTestRunCount": 4
  },
  "performance": {
    "requestCount": 18,
    "responseCount": 18,
    "exchangeCount": 18,
    "completedCount": 15,
    "failedCount": 1,
    "inputRequiredCount": 1,
    "pendingCount": 1,
    "rejectedCount": 0,
    "timeoutCount": 0,
    "timeoutRate": 0,
    "errorRate": 0.06,
    "inputRequiredRate": 0.06,
    "completedRate": 0.83,
    "latencyStatus": "within_threshold",
    "latencyThresholdMs": 30000,
    "overThresholdCount": 0,
    "staleAsyncResponseCount": 0,
    "p50LatencyMs": 1200,
    "p95LatencyMs": 4200,
    "p99LatencyMs": 4200,
    "unknownLatencyCount": 0
  },
  "comparison": {
    "previousWindow": {
      "startedAt": "2026-06-16T13:00:00Z",
      "endedAt": "2026-06-17T13:00:00Z",
      "exchangeCount": 14,
      "issueCount": 0,
      "timeoutCount": 0,
      "errorRate": 0,
      "p95LatencyMs": 3100,
      "sampledActivityCount": 28,
      "activityTruncated": false
    },
    "issueDelta": 2,
    "timeoutDelta": 0,
    "errorRateDelta": 0.06,
    "p95LatencyDeltaMs": 1100,
    "trend": "new_issue",
    "summary": "New issue pattern in this window: 2 more affected requests."
  },
  "toolBreakdown": [
    {
      "tool": "get_products",
      "exchangeCount": 12,
      "completedCount": 11,
      "failedCount": 1,
      "inputRequiredCount": 0,
      "rejectedCount": 0,
      "timeoutCount": 0,
      "p95LatencyMs": 3600
    }
  ],
  "discoveryParticipation": {
    "calledCount": 12,
    "skippedCount": 0,
    "excludedCount": 0,
    "timedOutCount": 0,
    "skipReasons": []
  },
  "outcomeMix": {
    "returnedProductsCount": 10,
    "returnedNoProductsCount": 1,
    "failedCount": 1,
    "businessRejectedCount": 0,
    "pendingCount": 1,
    "inputRequiredCount": 1,
    "timedOutCount": 0,
    "skippedCount": 0
  },
  "demandImpact": {
    "buyerRequestsAffected": 2,
    "missedProductOpportunityCount": null,
    "notes": [
      "Affected request count includes failed, timed-out, rejected, input-required, and skipped diagnostic attempts in this window.",
      "Missed product opportunity count is not estimated until buyer-side debug demand captures expected product counts."
    ]
  },
  "recentActivity": [
    {
      "id": 98765,
      "timestamp": "2026-06-18T12:45:00Z",
      "tool": "get_products",
      "taskStatus": "COMPLETED",
      "activityType": "response",
      "taskId": "task_123",
      "operationId": "op_456",
      "contextId": "ctx_789",
      "idempotencyKey": "idem_abc",
      "correlationId": "trace_def",
      "initiatorEmail": "s***@example.com",
      "origin": {
        "kind": "live_demand",
        "testRunUid": null,
        "testRunStatus": null,
        "testRunToolName": null,
        "testRunCreatedAt": null
      },
      "isIssue": false,
      "summary": "Returned 5 products."
    }
  ],
  "diagnosis": {
    "severity": "ok",
    "owner": "seller",
    "topCause": "Source is responding within threshold.",
    "issues": [],
    "nextSteps": ["Continue monitoring failed calls and webhook completion."],
    "developerHandoff": {
      "sourceId": "retail-adcp",
      "sourceName": "Retail AdCP Agent",
      "agentId": "agent_retail",
      "endpointUrl": "https://sales-agent.example.com/mcp",
      "latestTaskId": "task_123",
      "latestOperationId": "op_456",
      "latestContextId": "ctx_789",
      "latestIdempotencyKey": "idem_abc",
      "latestCorrelationId": "trace_def",
      "correlationHeaders": {
        "x-scope3-trace-id": "trace_def"
      },
      "latestError": null
    }
  },
  "docs": [
    {
      "label": "Inventory sources",
      "url": "https://docs.apostra.com/v2/storefront/inventory-sources/overview"
    }
  ]
}

The most important response blocks are:

Field	What it tells you
`source`	Current setup state: source identity, status, endpoint, auth, advertised capabilities, latest collapsed health, and the fuller `capabilityHealth` picture: each axis’s derived `status` alongside the per-observer `observations[]` behind it (below).
`window`	The lookback period and how much activity/test-run evidence was sampled. `activityTruncated: true` means the 200-row sample cap was reached; `recentActivity[]` shows only the most recent 200 rows, so counts and rates reflect the sample rather than the full window.
`performance`	Sampled `get_products` request/response counts, completion/failure/input-required rates, timeout rate, latency percentiles, and whether latency exceeded the configured threshold.
`comparison`	Current lookback window compared with the immediately preceding equal-length window. Trends are `new_issue`, `worse`, `improved`, `recovered`, `unchanged`, or `not_enough_data`; they describe observed source activity only. Previous-window `sampledActivityCount` and `activityTruncated` use the same 200-row sample cap as the current window.
`toolBreakdown[]`	Per-tool outcomes across sampled source-diagnostic exchanges. The current seller-facing diagnostic window analyzes `get_products`; use `externalCallLanes[]` for other observed outbound operations.
`externalCallLanes[]`	Prometheus-backed outbound-call rollups for this exact inventory source. Each lane reports call count, outcomes, and p95 latency without exposing other sources or provider targets. A newly deployed source label can have no observations yet.
`discoveryParticipation`	Observed `get_products` exchanges with this source, plus source-scoped diagnostic skips and timeouts. This is source-call evidence, not the buyer-side storefront candidate set.
`outcomeMix`	Whether calls returned products, returned no products, failed, timed out, waited for input, or were business-rejected.
`demandImpact`	Affected request count plus notes. Missed product opportunity count is currently `null` until buyer-side debug demand captures expected product counts.
`recentActivity[]`	Most recent `get_products` calls, responses, task statuses, errors, trace/correlation identifiers, initiator email, sandbox-test/live-demand origin, and summaries.
`diagnosis`	Severity, owner, top cause, structured `issues[]` breakdown, next steps, and developer handoff details to share with the source operator.

diagnosis.owner tells you who must act:

seller — a generic external sales agent you operate, or an adapter whose credentials need re-authorizing. The topCause and nextSteps are addressed to you.
scope3 — Apostra must act. This includes an official Apostra-hosted adapter (Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, …) whose runtime is failing, and an initial-response timeout where Apostra did not capture the Source task ID before its deadline. topCause says which one happened. There is nothing for you or the Source operator to change; nextSteps directs the investigation to Apostra.

diagnosis.topCause is the primary explanation to show first. Use diagnosis.issues[] when more than one signal is present in the same window: for example stale async callbacks, caller-deadline timeouts, slow responses, non-timeout failures, input-required responses, business rejections, skipped diagnostic attempts, missing auth, or inactive sources. Each issue includes a stable mode, severity, affected count, and human-readable summary. Issue mode values use the same source failure vocabulary as the diagnosis model, such as stale_async, timeout_degraded, auth_missing, source_runtime_error, business_rejected, and input_required. comparison.trend is a quick movement signal, not an uptime or SLA claim. It compares sampled source activity in the requested window with the immediately previous window of the same length. not_enough_data means neither window has enough source activity to compare; latency remains unknown when request and response rows cannot be paired. Zero calls in the selected window means the operations are untested in that window. It is not a failed call and cannot, by itself, support an Erroring verdict. Likewise, missing validation assertions mean no qualifying run has assessed them yet; read the captured health observation or failed exchange before attributing a failure to the Source. The latest source-health check can be older than the selected activity window. When an older failed check has no newer traffic to confirm or clear it, the overview labels it as stale evidence and asks for current verification. It does not claim the source is currently down, and it does not say that no action is needed. A healthy completed get_products result takes precedence over an unhealthy sync_creatives observation only when it is at least 24 hours newer and both observations remain inside the seven-day freshness window. Other current unhealthy observations stay visible and can still affect readiness.

Capability health observations

source.health and source.capabilityHealth are deprecated; read sourceHealth.health instead. They are still returned, unchanged. source.health is one collapsed cell for the inventory axis: the same worst-of-fresh collapse described below for capabilityHealth.inventory, not whichever check happened to write last. Its own status field is healthy, degraded, unhealthy, or unknown (unknown when nothing has ever reported) — a survivor of the per-source column this field has always read, kept as its own four-value field for compatibility. Present unhealthy as Erroring in human-facing output. Two of its other fields follow the same “worst check wins, not last check wins” rule, which matters when more than one check is reporting on the same source:

lastSuccessAt is the last time the currently worst-reporting check saw a healthy result, not the most recent success across every check. If that worst-reporting check has never once succeeded, lastSuccessAt reads null even though a different, healthy check has a success history.
lastErrorAt clears back to null as soon as the collapsed status is healthy, rather than continuing to show a past error that no longer reflects current state.

source.capabilityHealth is the fuller picture behind that cell, and it uses a different convention for “nothing has reported”: null instead of the string unknown. It has two axes, inventory and reporting, and each axis carries both a derived status and the observations[] evidence behind it:

Field	What it tells you
`status`	The current verdict for this axis, derived server-side from every check that has reported on it: `healthy`, `degraded`, or `unhealthy`, or `null`. It discounts a check that has gone stale (stopped reporting recently) in favor of fresher evidence, and reads `null` when nothing has ever reported. A surface that needs one value for this axis reads `status` directly rather than deriving its own collapse from `observations[]`.
`observations[]`	One entry per check that has reported on this axis, newest first: the evidence behind `status`.

Each entry in observations[] has:

Field	What it tells you
`observer`	The name of the check that produced this reading, for example `get_products`.
`status`	`healthy`, `degraded`, or `unhealthy`. Always one of these three; an entry never reports `unknown` or a null status — a check with nothing usable to say simply has no entry.
`previousStatus`	What this same check reported last time, or `null` on its first reading.
`cause`	Machine-readable failure code, or `null`.
`detail`	Human-readable description of the reading, or `null`.
`owner`	Who can act on a failing reading: the same `seller` / `scope3` distinction as `diagnosis.owner` above.
`observedAt`	When this check produced the reading (ISO-8601). Can be `""` for a persisted reading whose timestamp failed to parse; treat that as unknown, not as “now”.
`lastOkAt`	The last time this check saw a healthy result, or `null` if it never has.

Three things follow from that shape:

Different checks watch the same source and can disagree. A source can have one check confirming get_products connectivity while a separate reporting check is failing, and both readings stay visible in observations[] at once: for example, one check reporting the connection is fine while another reports the reporting feed failing. The old single cell was last-writer-wins: whichever check happened to run most recently silently overwrote whatever the others had reported, and the disagreement was lost. status restores that visibility without giving up a single verdict: it is computed across every reporting check, not just whichever wrote last.
An empty observations array means no check has reported on that axis yet, and status reads null accordingly. A source with no reporting checks configured shows "reporting": { "status": null, "observations": [] }; read that as “not observed,” not as “reporting is fine.”
A reading can go stale, and status already accounts for that. A check that stopped running leaves its last reading in place indefinitely; status discounts a reading old enough to no longer describe current state in favor of fresher evidence on the same axis. The same rule this page already applies to source.health applies here: a failure with no newer activity to confirm or clear it is stale evidence that needs current verification, not a confirmed current outage.
Each axis’s observations[] array is capped at 20 readings, newest first. A source realistically reports through a handful of named checks per axis, so this is not a limit you should expect to hit in practice.

The source health object

sourceHealth is one typed answer for this source, in the order you would ask the questions: which source this is, whether each operation is healthy, whether the writes Apostra sends it are landing, what is wrong and who acts, what exactly happened, and whether ads served. Apostra’s own Source Health tools return the same object, so you and Apostra support read the same answer in the same words.

Field	What it tells you
`sourceHealth.identity`	The seller account (`sellerAccount`), the source, the Agent that powers it (`agent`, or `null` when no Agent is bound), and whether buyer requests reach it (`routing`, or `null` when that could not be resolved).
`sourceHealth.health`	One row for each AdCP operation Apostra performs against a source, always in this order: `get_products`, `sync_accounts`, `sync_creatives`, `create_media_buy`, `update_media_buy`, `get_media_buy_delivery`.
`sourceHealth.writes`	What happened to the writes Apostra sent this source in the window. Not yet available on this read: it is always `null` here.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis`	What is wrong, who has to act, and how much it matters. `severity` and `owner` repeat the most severe finding and are `null` when there are no findings.
`sourceHealth.operations`	The operations at this source that are still open, each with who it is waiting on. An empty list when nothing is open; `null` when the open work could not be read.
`sourceHealth.liveEvidence`	Whether live traffic shows the ads served, for each certification use case. `null` for now.
`sourceHealth.window`	The window the counts cover: `hours`, `startedAt`, and `endedAt`.
`sourceHealth.generatedAt`	When this answer was computed (ISO-8601).

Each row in sourceHealth.health has:

Field	What it tells you
`sourceHealth.health[].operation`	The AdCP operation this row is about.
`sourceHealth.health[].status`	`healthy`, `degraded`, or `erroring`, or `null` when nothing has observed this operation. A `timeout` is never `erroring`: it only shows that a check ran out of time.
`sourceHealth.health[].condition`	How the latest failing call failed: `timeout`, `error_response`, `transport_error`, `invalid_response`, or `other`. `null` when it did not fail.
`sourceHealth.health[].lastOkAt`	The last time a check saw this operation succeed, or `null`.
`sourceHealth.health[].lastFailureAt`	When a check last saw this operation fail, or `null`.
`sourceHealth.health[].lastFailure`	What that failure said, or `null`.
`sourceHealth.health[].owner`	Who has to act on the current failure: `seller`, `operator` (the party that runs the Agent behind the source), or `scope3` (Apostra). `null` when the operation is healthy or not observed.
`sourceHealth.health[].window`	Calls to this operation in the window (`calls`, `succeeded`, `failed`, `timedOut`). Only `get_products` carries counts today; the other rows read `null`.

sourceHealth.writes is part of the object so every reader gets the same shape, but sellers cannot see write outcomes yet: this read always returns null for it. Apostra support reads the same object with the writes filled in, so when support tells you a write to your source is open or never answered, these are the fields they mean. Each entry covers one kind of write over the window:

Field	What it tells you
`sourceHealth.writes[].taskKind`	The kind of write: `media_buy` (creating or updating a media buy), `sync_creatives`, or `sync_accounts`.
`sourceHealth.writes[].attempts`	Writes of this kind Apostra sent the source in the window.
`sourceHealth.writes[].succeeded`	Writes the source completed.
`sourceHealth.writes[].failed`	Writes the source rejected or that ended in an error.
`sourceHealth.writes[].open`	Writes the source answered but has not finished, for example a media buy it accepted and is still working on.
`sourceHealth.writes[].neverAnswered`	Writes the source never responded to at all. These are counted apart from `open` because they usually need a different person to look: a source that never answered is not the same problem as one that answered and went quiet.
`sourceHealth.writes[].oldestOpenAt`	When the oldest still-unfinished write was sent, or `null` when none are open.
`sourceHealth.writes[].topFailure`	The most frequent failure in the window (not the most recent): its `errorCode`, how many writes it affected (`count`), and its `recovery` class, or `null` when nothing failed. `recovery` is `transient` (a retry can succeed), `correctable` (the request has to be fixed and sent again), `structural` (no retry can succeed, so someone has to step in), or `null` when unclassified.

An empty writes list means Apostra sent this source no writes in the window. null means the writes are unknown, not absent. sourceHealth.operations answers “what is still waiting at this source, on whom, and since when”. An operation is one intended change at this source: a media buy created or updated, a creative synced, or an account request decided. It is listed while it is open, and it is open because of what the source, you, the buyer or Apostra has not done yet, never because of how old it is: an operation waiting for three days is visible from its first minute, with its age in since. Settled operations, and the individual attempts behind each operation, are not listed yet, so every entry is open and its attempts list is empty.

Field	What it tells you
`sourceHealth.operations[].id`	The operation’s id. Every retry, poll and webhook for the same change shares it, so you can quote it to Apostra support or to the source’s operator.
`sourceHealth.operations[].operation`	The AdCP operation: `sync_accounts`, `sync_creatives`, `create_media_buy`, `update_media_buy`, or `get_media_buy_delivery` for a final report you upload.
`sourceHealth.operations[].subject`	What the operation acts on: its `kind` (`media_buy`, `creative`, or `account`) and `id`. `revision` is `null` for now.
`sourceHealth.operations[].state`	`open` for every listed operation.
`sourceHealth.operations[].startedAt`	When the operation began: when Apostra first sent it to the source, or when the request reached you.
`sourceHealth.operations[].waitingOn`	Who the operation is waiting on, since when, and for what.
`sourceHealth.operations[].waitingOn.party`	`seller` when you must approve, review, or do manual work. `operator` when the party that runs the Agent behind the source accepted the change and has not finished it. `buyer` when the buyer must attach creatives the source asked for. `scope3` when Apostra must make the next move, such as retrying a forward or delivering a creative.
`sourceHealth.operations[].waitingOn.since`	When the wait on that party began (ISO-8601).
`sourceHealth.operations[].waitingOn.target`	The exact thing being waited for, as a `kind` and `id`: an `approval` or `creative_review`, a manual `work_item`, an `account_request`, the `task` id the source returned (quote it to the source’s operator), or the `creative` Apostra still has to deliver. `null` when there is no single thing to name.
`sourceHealth.operations[].attempts`	The individual tries at the operation. Empty for now.

Behind Apostra’s own managed sales agent there is no separate operator: a change it is holding is waiting on your own review in your ad server, so it reads waitingOn.party: "seller". The operator of an Agent you have authorized to power a source can read that source’s health object. They see that an operation is waiting on you and since when, but not what you have to decide: target is null on those entries. They see no actions, generic text in place of findings you or Apostra own, and no request or response bodies unless you invite them to debug that source. See Read one client source’s health. A source that pauses a task for more input (the AdCP input-required status) is waiting on its caller, Apostra, not on you or its operator. Apostra cannot supply that input yet, and checking the task again would not move it, so the operation fails as soon as Apostra sees the pause rather than staying open:

a creative delivery fails as delivery_failed; see Creative reviews;
a media-buy create or update fails with the error code source_input_required, owned by Apostra; see Media buys & pending operations.

Neither is listed in sourceHealth.operations. In sourceHealth.writes the write counts as failed, and topFailure.errorCode reads source_input_required with recovery: "structural". Each entry in sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings has:

Field	What it tells you
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].id`	Stable for this source and problem.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].code`	The kind of problem, for example `auth_missing`, `source_runtime_error`, or `timeout_degraded`.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].operation`	The operation the problem is about, or `null` when it is about the source’s setup.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].owner`	Who has to act: `seller`, `operator`, or `scope3`.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].severity`	`blocking` stops selling or setup, `attention` makes it worse, and `advisory` will only matter later.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].summary`	One sentence: what is wrong and why it matters.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].detail`	Supporting evidence, such as the latest error, or `null`.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].action`	The next step: `recheck` (run a named check again), `reconnect`, `open` (open the setup page to fix it), or `none` when you have nothing to do.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].docsAnchor`	A troubleshooting link for this problem, when one exists.
`sourceHealth.diagnosis.findings[].observedAt`	When the finding was made.

sourceHealth replaces source.health, source.capabilityHealth, diagnosis.severity, diagnosis.owner, and diagnosis.issues. Those fields are deprecated but still returned, unchanged, so existing integrations keep working. Their ok, warning, critical, unknown, and unhealthy values never appear in sourceHealth.

Errors

400 BAD_REQUEST — windowHours is not a positive integer or is greater than 720.
401 UNAUTHORIZED — missing or invalid API key.
404 NOT_FOUND — no inventory source with this sourceId exists for the storefront.

See Errors for the full error contract.

Open the diagnostics surface

Source diagnostics overview showing a sales-agent source that needs attention, error counts, late callbacks, and the next investigation action

Diagnostics open from the source you are looking at, scoped to that source:

From the source itself. In the ad-server or sales-agent source app in chat, use Open full diagnostics. It opens the Source Diagnostics app already focused on the connection you had selected. (The in-app View details / View diagnostics buttons are different — they switch to the advanced tab inside the same source app.)
From Pending operations. When a source you operate degrades, it appears in the Sources degraded group of the Pending operations view with its severity and a one-line summary. Each row’s Open full diagnostics opens the Source Diagnostics app scoped to that source.
By asking Murph. Ask “why is <source> failing?” or “show me diagnostics for <source>” — Murph opens the Source Diagnostics app scoped to that source. Naming the source focuses the app on it; otherwise it opens on the source you last had selected.
From the Help menu. Open Ask Murph, choose Help, then choose Diagnostics for the storefront-wide diagnostics view (change history, Calls, source tools, test runs).

Choose Show me from a Source Diagnostics announcement, or choose ? in the diagnostics surface, to start the two-minute quick tour. The tour teaches the same operating sequence in every supported chat host:

Start with the question: is this source healthy, what changed, and who acts?
Choose the evidence window. Start with 24 hours, narrow for an active incident, or widen it to confirm a pattern.
Read the overview verdict before inspecting individual calls.
Use Evidence for recent calls and partner-safe handoff identifiers.
Take the smallest diagnosed next action, then refresh or run a focused test.

The surface has three primary views: Summary, Evidence, and Setup. Run discovery test calls the selected external source’s get_products directly with a read-only, no-spend brief and records the result as a durable source test run. It does not create a media buy. Refresh capabilities is the secondary setup check: it calls the source capability endpoint directly and shows the result in the app; it does not send a synthetic question to Murph. Capability refresh verifies endpoint reachability, credentials, and declared tools only—it does not prove discovery. The refresh is scoped to the selected Source’s own connection identity, so it works even when that Source has no legacy standalone Agent record. A buyer-path result appears under the selected source only when diagnostics have an observed source exchange to attribute to it. A storefront intelligence run that stopped before source dispatch remains storefront evidence, not a failed call against the external agent. In Setup, diagnostics show the selected Source’s provider-declared mode, effective product path, and readiness. That authority is read-only in Apostra. To remediate an incomplete wholesale path, correct the Agent’s reported product, property, format, pricing, or execution declaration, then ask Apostra support to refresh or reconcile the capability. Do not change a mode to hide a readiness failure. For an Agent-supplied source, Connected means its source connection and required credentials are ready. Setup does not wait for an Apostra wholesale catalog, and a null reporting status (no reporting check has reported yet) does not become setup work. A subsequently observed degraded or unhealthy source is shown as Needs attention instead.

Powered by

When the selected Source is backed by a Sales Agent, Setup shows a Powered by card naming that Agent and linking to its Agent Page. The card’s heading reflects who holds the Agent, not just that one exists:

Heading	When it shows	Meaning
Your Agent	The Sales Agent belongs to your own organization.	You own and operate this Agent; the card links to your full Agent Page.
Powered by Agent, with the Agent’s name and “Operated by operator” below	The Sales Agent belongs to another organization.	You are using someone else’s Agent as this Source’s supply; the card links to the client-safe Powered by projection of that Agent’s Page — no writes, only the facts relevant to your connection.
This source isn’t linked to an agent yet.	The Source has no explicit Agent binding yet.	Apostra never guesses a binding from URL matching — connect the Source to an Agent to populate this card.
Agent link revoked	The Source’s Agent binding was revoked.	The prior connection no longer applies; reconnect the Source to a current Agent to restore Agent-backed diagnostics.

See Agents for the underlying powered-by-agent endpoint and its ACTIVE / UNMAPPED / REVOKED states. The tour changes tabs and highlights controls, but it does not change source configuration. Any product action keeps its normal safeguards. You can also open Source Diagnostics directly by replacing <account-id> with your account id:

https://app.apostra.com/<account-id>/murph?view=chat&askMurph=open_feature&feature=source-health

To focus the app on one inventory source, include diagnosticsSourceId:

https://app.apostra.com/<account-id>/murph?view=chat&askMurph=open_feature&feature=source-health&diagnosticsSourceId=<source-id>

Task-level filtering is available inside the app’s recent-call search after it loads; there is not currently a task-id deep link. Slack cannot render the MCP app inline. When Murph diagnoses a sales-agent source from Slack, it provides this same account- and source-scoped link as a Open sales-agent diagnostics button. Open it, choose Run discovery test, then reply done in the Slack thread. Murph looks up the recorded source test and interprets it; you do not need to copy the result between apps.

Start with the inventory source

Open the storefront inventory source in the app, or call Get storefront readiness. The sourceDiagnostics[] entry for each source gives the current operating picture:

Field	What it tells you
`sourceStatus`	Whether the source is active, pending, or disabled.
`auth`	Whether the source requires credentials and whether they are configured.
`capabilities`	Whether the source advertises support for product discovery, media-buy creation, updates, signals, and wholesale products.
`productMode`	The Agent declaration, Source selection, effective product mode, bounded reconciliation reasons, and readiness for each Storefront-built or Agent-supplied `path`. `WHOLESALE` means Storefront-built; `COMPOSING` means Agent-supplied.
`productBuilder`	Legacy compatibility projection of `composition`, `passthrough`, or `unknown`. Use the Source product-path fields for authority. Component-cache readiness applies only to the Storefront-built path when the Agent reports AdCP 3.1+ support.
`compliance`	Latest AAO / AdCP compliance result for the source.
`debug`	Sanitized advertised tools, channels, publisher domains, protocol version, billing support, and related capability metadata.
`health`	Current source health, including latest error, latest success, and latest check timestamps when available.
`capabilityHealth`	Derived `status` plus per-observer `observations[]` for the `inventory` and `reporting` axes, same shape as Capability health observations above.

If the source is not active, credentials are missing, or the source does not advertise the tool you need, fix that before debugging individual buyer requests. Treat a failed capability refresh and failed source traffic as separate signals. A refresh can fail while a recent get_products call succeeds, and that successful call is direct evidence that the source responded. Planning can continue from a clearly labeled last-known capability document; when no capability document is available, it reports the probe failure separately instead of treating missing metadata as proof that the source is unreachable.

Understand product paths

The productMode.paths[] diagnostics report each Source’s effective runtime path and its readiness. Storefront-built means Apostra can use ready wholesale inputs from the Source when composing products. Agent-supplied means the connected Agent returns complete buyer-ready products. An Agent that supports both reports each path independently; a problem on one path does not silently reclassify the other. Use the Source’s normal detail page for connection and operating actions, and use productMode diagnostics to identify whether the Source, Apostra, or the connected Agent owns a readiness problem. Storefront readiness also includes Interpretable product formats when canonical-format compliance is enabled for your storefront. Direct canonical format_options[] and projectable legacy {agent_url, id} references both pass, regardless of source age. If a legacy product contains several format references, at least one usable canonical projection keeps the product available; an unsupported sibling reference is omitted from the buyer-facing format options and remains visible as an advisory diagnostic. A product with no usable canonical option is withheld on its own, while the Source and its other products remain request-eligible. Seller Setup prefers public catalog evidence when a source has it, so an older buyer-account or sandbox-test observation does not override a corrected public declaration. Buyer discovery and purchase still validate the relevant account context before products can serve. The readiness check names unresolved products and their affected Source as repair guidance; it does not make the storefront transaction-ineligible. Replace an unsupported custom reference with an exact shared-catalog reference or publish an interpretable custom canonical declaration. The Source’s separate connectivity health can remain healthy because a successful response with a partial catalog warning is not a reachability failure. This compatibility policy is distinct from observed Source health. A health error does not automatically make the Source ineligible or suppress its next request; stopping traffic requires a separate explicit Source or Agent control. See Connect your sales agent for the product-format policy. Storefront readiness also includes Product channels declared. It counts, for each connected third-party sales agent, the products that declare no AdCP channels: neither the product’s own channels nor applies_to_channels on any of its format options. Buyers filter discovery, route proposal requests, and report delivery by channel, so a product without one is missing from channel-filtered discovery and its delivery reports with no channel. A format type on its own, such as a video or audio format, does not count as a declared channel. This check is a warning. It never blocks the storefront, and the Source keeps receiving requests. Ask the agent’s operator to add channels (for example display, olv, ctv, or streaming_audio) to each product the check names. We do not refuse an external agent’s products for missing channels; whether they become required is for AdCP to decide (adcontextprotocol/adcp#7869).

Inspect recent AdCP activity

For source-specific traffic, use Ask Murph > Help > Diagnostics > Debug calls and ask about the inventory source by name. Murph can inspect recent third-party sales-agent activity for the caller’s storefront: requests, responses, webhook/status changes, task IDs, task statuses, and sanitized payloads. You can ask for a specific time range (“last 2 hours” or an ISO start/end window) or provide a debug/correlation ID from x-scope3-debug-id, traceparent, x-request-id, operation ID, task ID, context ID, or idempotency key. The diagnostics surface also exposes a details panel for recent calls. Use it when a sales-agent developer needs the technical handoff: the observed time, operation/task identifiers, outbound request endpoint, partner-safe headers, and the full request body and the full response or error payload exactly as exchanged with your agent (for an A2A source, the complete message/send request and the returned task, including its parts, status, and artifacts). The displayed headers are limited to debugging and correlation values such as x-scope3-debug-id, traceparent, and x-request-id. Only sensitive values are masked before display or copy: authorization headers, cookies, credentials, tokens, API keys, signed URL parameters, email addresses, phone numbers, and bank details. Everything else in the exchange is shown as sent, including the AdCP version, buying mode, account reference, and the buyer’s brief — your Agent already received all of it in the request. Long individual values (over 8,000 characters), lists over 500 items, structures nested more than 64 levels deep, and a whole body over 1 MB are shortened with an explicit marker rather than silently dropped, and a shortened body is flagged as truncated. This is the right path for questions like:

“Why did this source fail get_products?”
“What did Apostra send to my sales agent?”
“What did my sales agent return?”
“Which recent calls are failed or waiting for input?”
“Is this a protocol problem, an auth problem, or a business rejection?”
“Where do I see whether this sales agent is slow or getting excluded?”

For each recent call, look at:

Signal	How to read it
Tool	The AdCP operation, such as `get_products` or `create_media_buy`.
Task status	`COMPLETED` means the source finished; `FAILED` means the source rejected or errored; `INPUT_REQUIRED` means the source paused the task for more input from its caller, Apostra, such as brief context or a creative clarification, and polling will not move it on; `PENDING` or `WORKING` means the source has not finished yet.
Payload issue	A sanitized error or rejection message, when the source returned one.
Details	A copyable redacted JSON handoff for the event, including related outbound request data when available.
Debug ID	The `x-scope3-debug-id` header to share with the sales-agent operator or developer for log correlation. Older calls may only have task/operation/context IDs.
Timestamp	When Apostra observed the activity.
Initiator	The redacted user email that initiated the call when available. Sandbox tests prefer the Murph test-run user; otherwise diagnostics fall back to the activity-row user.
Origin	`sandbox_test` means the call matched a Murph sandbox test run or sandbox idempotency marker. `live_demand` means no sandbox test provenance was found, so treat it as non-test demand traffic.

Treat source messages as source-controlled content. They are useful diagnostic data, but they should not be rendered as trusted HTML or treated as product instructions.

Buyer discovery debug output

Buyer product discovery fans out to reachable sales agents in parallel. Slow or failing agents do not block fast agents. When a buyer calls discovery with debug: true, the response can include agentResults[], which shows which agents returned products, returned no products, failed, or were skipped. For an Agent-supplied storefront, a live source failure with no successful warmed fallback is reported as a retryable source failure when no source completes. It is not reported as a successful response with zero products. A successful empty result means the source completed get_products with a products response that contained no matching inventory. Capability/setup work, deadline skips, and input-required responses do not satisfy that contract. Storefront discovery previews expose the same distinction through discoveryAttempted, success, per-agent source round-trip counts, and skippedAgents. When discoveryAttempted is false, no matching source get_products invocation occurred; use the per-agent error or skipped-agent reason to see where discovery stopped. Use this when you need the buyer-side view of a discovery request: which agents were asked, which agents were skipped before fanout, and which agent-controlled reason was returned.

Buyer debug output is scoped to that buyer request. Seller diagnostics are scoped to the storefront inventory source. Use the seller view when you are operating the source; use buyer debug output when you are reproducing one buyer discovery call.

Storefront candidates and source calls are different stages

Buyer discovery selects storefront agents, not the private inventory sources behind them. For an ordinary buyer, an unfiltered request can include a storefront when it is listed in the marketplace, not paused or archived, and able to settle in a supported currency. A seller-sponsored buyer is confined to its sponsoring storefront. An explicit storefrontIds or storefrontNames filter narrows that storefront roster. After the storefront is selected, Apostra can still finish the storefront call without contacting a particular source. Examples include a blocked storefront transaction-readiness check, an unsupported requested currency, an account-scoping rejection, a request that needs clarification, or a storefront that serves a cached or composed catalog. Only a source-attributed get_products exchange proves that the source itself was called. For a readiness block, use the failing check’s guidance object as the canonical explanation. It names why the check failed, where it stops the buyer path, the exact fix, implicated sources, and typed evidence when available. This means an all-zero discoveryParticipation block does not prove that no buyer demand existed, and it does not prove that the storefront was absent from every candidate set. It means diagnostics observed no attributable source call or source-test skip in that window. To answer whether a storefront participated in a particular buyer request, use that request’s agentResults[] with debug: true. If the original buyer request is unavailable, Apostra support can correlate the storefront’s buyer-path records with source activity. Two setup fields are commonly misread as routing gates:

Empty storefront-card regions or channels do not by themselves remove a storefront from get_products fanout. Requested-channel prefiltering uses the agent’s advertised channel capabilities; unknown coverage remains eligible. Country constraints are passed in the brief for the storefront or source to evaluate.
linkedStorefront on an inventory-source response is retained for response compatibility and is always null. It does not attach an AGENT source to its owning storefront and is not a discovery-routing requirement.

Empty responses and latency do not change future ranking

returnedNoProductsCount and latencyStatus are diagnostic observations. They are not inputs to later storefront eligibility, source selection, or product and proposal ranking. There is no rolling empty-response or slow-response penalty window. A source that returns no products contributes no candidates to that individual response, so there is nothing from that source to rank for that request. When a buyer explicitly enables managed screening and ranking, Apostra evaluates the products and proposals returned for the current request against the buyer’s instructions. Without that requested ranking, Apostra does not apply a historical-performance ranking system.

How source latency is measured

The latency fields and a source-test run’s durationMs measure different intervals:

Each diagnostics latency sample is one attributable get_products exchange, measured from its recorded request activity to its final recorded response activity. p50LatencyMs, p95LatencyMs, and p99LatencyMs are percentiles across those paired samples in the selected window.
latencyStatus is over_threshold when any paired exchange is greater than latencyThresholdMs, or when the window contains a timeout. It is not a comparison between the window’s p95 and the threshold. When no recorded exchange supplies an explicit timeout or deadline, the current diagnostic default is 5,000 ms.
A direct source test’s durationMs is wall-clock time for the complete test probe, from source-client setup through completion or failure of get_products. It can include connection/session setup, capability negotiation performed by the client, the get_products exchange, and asynchronous-task handling. It is calculated before trace lookup and test-run persistence. Separate capability calls do not enter the get_products latency percentile, even though they can increase the test’s total duration.

Use the source exchange and transport timeline to split seller-handler time from Apostra/client overhead. Do not compare the run’s total durationMs directly with latencyThresholdMs.

What this does not answer yet

The diagnostics show source state, recent protocol activity, latency percentiles, timeout counts, and source-level skipped/excluded evidence for the selected lookback window. For broader business impact analysis, combine:

sourceDiagnostics[].health for the latest known source health.
Murph diagnostics for recent ADCP call details.
Buyer discovery agentResults[] with debug: true for one discovery request.

If a seller asks for missed product opportunities, lost buyer demand, revenue impact, or longer-term trends, treat that as a product/documentation gap unless a tool returns that exact rollup. The actionable answer should explain what exists today, link to the UI surface above, and call out the missing diagnostic that should be added.

Empty catalog from a version mismatch (`VERSION_UNSUPPORTED`)

If a source’s products vanish from your catalog and its recent Calls show a VERSION_UNSUPPORTED payload — e.g. AdCP version '3.1' is not supported. Supported: ['3.0', ...] — the source’s AdCP server is rejecting the protocol version Apostra pins instead of serving a compatible one. This is almost always a source-side issue, not a problem with your storefront. Per the AdCP spec, a source that supports the same major version must downshift to its highest supported release and serve the request; VERSION_UNSUPPORTED is reserved for a genuine cross-major mismatch. A source that returns it for a same-major minor (it supports 3.0 but rejects 3.1) is running a non-conformant or stale AdCP server build. At the current 3.1 pin, Apostra does not retry component warming at 3.0 and does not reinterpret a 3.0 response as a component catalog. A one-shot retry hook can become active only for a future pin above 3.1 when the source advertises a compatible same-major GA release that is still at least 3.1. A 3.0-only source may still answer live buyer briefs through the pass-through path, but its components stay absent until the source operator upgrades the server. Share the source name and the sanitized VERSION_UNSUPPORTED payload (from the Calls tab, Details panel) with the sales-agent operator, and point them at AdCP versioning & negotiation for the rule their server must follow.

Practical checklist

When a source is not showing up or a buyer request did not return products:

Confirm the inventory source is active.
Confirm credentials are configured if the source requires auth.
Confirm the source advertises the needed capability, especially get_products for product discovery.
Check source health for the latest error, success, and check timestamps.
Ask Murph to inspect recent Calls for that source.
If reproducing a buyer discovery request, run discovery with debug: true and inspect agentResults[].
If the failure is still unclear, share the source name, task ID, timestamp, and sanitized error with your sales-agent operator or Apostra support.

Inventory sources

Get storefront readiness

Inspect readiness and per-source diagnostics

Product discovery

Understand buyer discovery and agentResults

Errors

Shared Apostra error contract

AdCP versioning & negotiation

Why a version mismatch empties a catalog, and the downshift rule

Start here

Buy media

Sell media

Help and updates

Diagnose third-party sales agents

Start with the connection

Source health

A timeout is not an error response

Physical transport evidence

Read seller readiness without combining unrelated results

Endpoint

Buyer exclusion-list impact

Canonical reporting evidence

Local synthetic Demo evidence

Refresh current health evidence

Run the full Sales Agent validation

Request

Parameters

Response

Capability health observations

The source health object

Errors

Open the diagnostics surface

Powered by

Start with the inventory source

Understand product paths

Inspect recent AdCP activity

Buyer discovery debug output

Storefront candidates and source calls are different stages

Empty responses and latency do not change future ranking

How source latency is measured

What this does not answer yet

Empty catalog from a version mismatch (`VERSION_UNSUPPORTED`)

Practical checklist

Inventory sources

Get storefront readiness

Product discovery

Errors

AdCP versioning & negotiation

​Start with the connection

​Source health

​A timeout is not an error response

​Physical transport evidence

​Read seller readiness without combining unrelated results

​Endpoint

​Buyer exclusion-list impact

​Canonical reporting evidence

​Local synthetic Demo evidence

​Refresh current health evidence

​Run the full Sales Agent validation

​Request

​Parameters

​Response

​Capability health observations

​The source health object

​Errors

​Open the diagnostics surface

​Powered by

​Start with the inventory source

​Understand product paths

​Inspect recent AdCP activity

​Buyer discovery debug output

​Storefront candidates and source calls are different stages

​Empty responses and latency do not change future ranking

​How source latency is measured

​What this does not answer yet

​Empty catalog from a version mismatch (VERSION_UNSUPPORTED)

​Practical checklist

​Related

Inventory sources

Get storefront readiness

Product discovery

Errors

AdCP versioning & negotiation

Start with the connection

Source health

A timeout is not an error response

Physical transport evidence

Read seller readiness without combining unrelated results

Endpoint

Buyer exclusion-list impact

Canonical reporting evidence

Local synthetic Demo evidence

Refresh current health evidence

Run the full Sales Agent validation

Request

Parameters

Response

Capability health observations

The source health object

Errors

Open the diagnostics surface

Powered by

Start with the inventory source

Understand product paths

Inspect recent AdCP activity

Buyer discovery debug output

Storefront candidates and source calls are different stages

Empty responses and latency do not change future ranking

How source latency is measured

What this does not answer yet

Empty catalog from a version mismatch (`VERSION_UNSUPPORTED`)

Practical checklist

Related