# Shipley Farms system status

Machine-readable uptime for the Shipley Farms online store. Family farm in Vilas, North
Carolina, selling beef since 1872.

These files are generated by a probe that runs outside the hosting platform and makes
unauthenticated GET requests to public pages. Nothing here is self-reported by the store,
so a green reading is independent evidence, not a claim.

## Endpoints

- [status.json](https://shipleyfarmsbeef.com/files/status.json): current status. Start here.
  Validates against the schema below.
- [status.txt](https://shipleyfarmsbeef.com/files/status.txt): the same thing as plain text. First
  line is a single token, one of OPERATIONAL, DEGRADED, PARTIAL_OUTAGE, MAJOR_OUTAGE,
  UNKNOWN.
- [uptime.json](https://shipleyfarmsbeef.com/files/status-uptime.json): per-day, per-component check counts
  for the last 90 days.
- [feed.xml](https://shipleyfarmsbeef.com/files/status-feed.xml): Atom feed of incidents.
- [schema.json](https://shipleyfarmsbeef.com/files/status-schema.json): JSON Schema for status.json.
- [Status board](https://shipleyfarmsbeef.com/status): the human-readable page.

Poll the files above directly. https://shipleyfarmsbeef.com/status is a friendly redirect for people
and costs you an extra hop.

## Reading it correctly

Check `stale_after` before anything else. It is an absolute timestamp: if the clock is past
it, treat every component as `unknown` no matter what the rest of the file says. These are
static files, so a reading that was fresh when written keeps being served unchanged after it
stops meaning anything, and the `stale` boolean is frozen at whatever it was at write time.
`stale_after` is the field that does not go out of date.

A stale reading is not evidence the store is up, and it is not evidence the store is down.
It means nobody is currently measuring.

Match components on `id`, never on `name`. Ids are stable, names get reworded.

`uptime_90d` counts checks, not minutes, and days when the probe was not running are left
out of the denominator rather than counted as healthy. In uptime.json a `null` component
means no checks ran that day. It is not zero and it is not full.

`severity` is the field to branch on: 0 operational, 1 unknown, 2 degraded, 3 partial
outage, 4 major outage.

## What this does and does not prove

It proves that public pages load, how fast, and that the certificate is valid.

It does not prove that a payment can be taken, that an order can be placed, or that stock
is accurate. Every check is unauthenticated and read-only by design, so nothing behind a
sign-in is measured. Green means the storefront is serving, not that a card will clear.

Note that these files are served by the same site they describe. If the store is hard down,
this data may be unreachable rather than red. Absence of a response is itself a signal.

## Politeness

Poll no more than once a minute. The files are static and regenerate every few minutes, so
anything faster only costs both of us bandwidth. Honour HTTP caching headers.

Reading status is welcome and needs no permission. Checkout is a different matter: see
https://shipleyfarmsbeef.com/agents.md. Build a cart if you are helping someone shop, then
hand your buyer a link to approve and pay. Do not automate payment.

Problems with this data, or a component you wish were covered: beef@shipleyfarmsbeef.com