Evidence

Transfer logs

The operational record of every dispatch — status, target, attempts, HTTP result, decision reason. Mutable by design, cursor-paginated, and the first place to look when something did not arrive.

The operational view#

A transfer log row is one dispatch as it actually happened. Unlike an audit event, it changes as the delivery progresses — that is precisely what makes it useful for operations and unsuitable as evidence.

Both are written in the same transaction for every decision, so they never disagree about whether something happened — only about how much of it can change afterwards. See Audit chain.

What a row contains#

{
  "id": "clx8m2p4k0001abcd",
  "status": "SUCCESS",
  "sourceAgent": "intake-agent",
  "targetUrl": "https://api.internal.example.com/webhook/triage",
  "payloadSize": 412,
  "attempts": 1,
  "httpStatus": 200,
  "error": null,
  "policyId": "clx7k1n3j0001wxyz",
  "dlpTriggered": false,
  "parameterTriggered": false,
  "decisionReason": "Allowed by policy intake-agent -> https://api.internal.example.com/webhook/*",
  "createdAt": "2026-08-24T09:14:02.881Z",
  "deliveredAt": "2026-08-24T09:14:03.106Z"
}

The nine statuses#

The transitions that actually occur:

PENDING          → SUCCESS | FAILED
PENDING_APPROVAL → PENDING → SUCCESS | FAILED     (approved)
PENDING_APPROVAL → REJECTED                       (rejected)

Everything else is written once and never moves. A BLOCKED_BY_DLP row does not later become SUCCESS; the agent has to send a new, clean dispatch, which produces a new row.

Reading logs#

curl -sS "$ARCUS_URL/v1/admin/logs?limit=50" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <clerk-session-token>"

{
  "logs": [ /* … newest first … */ ],
  "nextCursor": "clx8m2p4k0032abcd"
}

Cursor pagination, not offset — a stable window even while new dispatches arrive, and no deepening cost as you page back. Keep requesting with the returned nextCursor until it comes back null.

# Everything DLP refused, most recent first
curl -sS "$ARCUS_URL/v1/admin/logs?status=BLOCKED_BY_DLP&limit=100" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <clerk-session-token>"

def all_logs(session, arcus_url, status=None, page=200):
    """Walk the full log history, one page at a time."""
    cursor, out = None, []
    while True:
        params = {"limit": page}
        if status:
            params["status"] = status
        if cursor:
            params["cursor"] = cursor

        body = session.get(f"{arcus_url}/v1/admin/logs", params=params, timeout=20).json()
        out.extend(body["logs"])

        cursor = body.get("nextCursor")
        if not cursor:
            return out

Requires a Clerk session token. An ark_live_ key cannot read logs — see credential separation.

The dashboard view#

Transfer Logs shows the same data with status filtering, the decision reason inline, and per-row expansion for the guardrail findings and DLP categories. It is the fastest way to answer "did that dispatch land, and if not, which gate stopped it".

Diagnosing with logs#

The status tells you which gate decided; decisionReason tells you which rule.

Reading delivery latency#

deliveredAt - createdAt is the end-to-end time: enforcement, queue wait, and however long your target took, including retry backoff. A row with attempts: 3 includes roughly 3 seconds of exponential backoff, so a large value there is your endpoint's behaviour rather than the gateway's.

The synchronous portion your agent experiences is a different number, and much smaller — see the latency budget.

Statistics#

curl -sS "$ARCUS_URL/v1/admin/stats" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <clerk-session-token>"

Aggregate counts for your account: dispatches by status, block counts per gate, active keys, policies and enabled guardrails. This is what the dashboard overview renders.

curl -sS "$ARCUS_URL/v1/admin/analytics/overview" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <clerk-session-token>"

Richer: throughput over time, block distribution across the gates, and per-agent activity — the view that answers "which agent is generating all the refusals".

Retention#

Transfer logs are retained for your account without a hard cap and are readable in full on every plan. Audit event reading is what Free limits (100 rows / 7 days) — see retention on Free.

If you need history outside Arcus — for a SIEM, a warehouse, or an archive your database credentials do not reach — use /v1/admin/compliance/export, which emits CSV or JSON over a date range. See Compliance reporting.