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People and cohorts

Events come from people, and the directory is built from what they send: an anonymous id becomes a person the moment an identify call names them, groups arrive the same way, and a cohort is a saved set of people defined by behaviour or state.

At a glance

Identity
identify names an anonymous id; write-once
Traits
$-prefixed traits are reserved; the rest are yours
Groups
group(type, key) rides the same pipeline
Cohorts
Behavioural clauses are swept; state clauses are live
Auth
Project key to send, access token to read
  • Reserved traits wear the $ prefix; a custom property named email stays custom.
  • Identification is write-once: the moment a person was first named never moves.
  • Merging is deliberate: two ids fold into one person only when asked, never by guess.

How it works

Every event carries a distinct id, and the directory folds them into people: first seen, last seen, event and session counts, and the properties their identifying events carried. Identification is an event like any other, which is why an identify accepted with a 202 is accepted for processing rather than instantly visible. A cohort then names a set of these people: behavioural clauses count events over a window and are re-evaluated by a sweep that stamps when it ran; state clauses compare current attributes and are answered live. The same cohort scopes a workbench question, targets a campaign and gates a workflow trigger.

Where to reach it

SurfaceOperation
RESTPOST /v1/identify · POST /v1/group (project key, accepted for processing)
GraphQLpeople, person, peopleGroups, cohorts queries · mergePeople, createCohort, updateCohort, setCohortActive, deleteCohort mutations
RealtimeNone of its own: the directory updates as events are processed
MCPNone

Example

curl "https://eu.api.prodantix.com/v1/identify" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PRODANTIX_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "distinct_id": "u_8f3a", "properties": { "$email": "ada@example.com", "plan": "pro" } }'

The directory is browsed on the People screen and cohorts are authored on Cohorts.