Smokeball API: Events, Limits, and Carly Workflows
An attorney leaves a client meeting with three next steps; Carly can put the note, tasks, owners, and due dates onto the right Smokeball matter before the next meeting starts. The firm can also use Carly for recurring reviews of overdue work and uninvoiced activity, or let a configured Smokeball event start the next internal checklist or handoff.
Smokeball supplies the practice data and supported events; Carly provides the on-demand, recurring, and event-triggered workflow layer across Smokeball, email, Slack, calendars, tasks, and the rest of the firm’s stack.
What Carly can do with Smokeball directly
Carly connects to Smokeball so attorneys and staff can manage routine matter data without opening the desktop app:
- Add a note after a client meeting while the instructions and next steps are still fresh.
- Create a task on the correct matter with an owner and due date.
- Create a contact and open a new matter from intake details.
- Pull a matter’s status, contacts, notes, and open tasks by email or text.
Those are verified integration actions. They are valuable precisely because they reduce delayed data entry; they should not be inflated into automatic conflict checks, legal decisions, collections, or client communications.
Recurring work is a workflow, not a webhook
A Carly workflow can run on a schedule your firm sets. Examples include a weekday digest of overdue tasks, a weekly list of matters with no recent activity, or a month-end review queue for uninvoiced fees and expenses. The workflow can retrieve the records, summarize them, and email the responsible staff member without a chat window open.
Keep the first version internal. Any workflow that sends a client communication, moves money, changes a legal deadline, or writes substantive matter data should have firm-approved templates, permissions, logging, and the appropriate human review.
How event-started Smokeball workflows work
For near-real-time work, a supported event can start a Carly workflow—but only after the trigger is configured. Depending on the event, use Smokeball’s API webhooks or its official Zapier trigger, then pass the event into the workflow. For example:
- A new matter can create the firm’s standard internal intake tasks and notify the assigned team.
- A new task can add an internal reminder or mirror the deadline into an approved task system.
- A new fee or expense can enter a recurring billing-review queue rather than being sent or charged automatically.
- A contact update can trigger a controlled sync to the firm’s CRM.
The event payload starts the workflow; it does not define the legal or operational response. Configure each downstream email, task, calendar entry, and Smokeball write explicitly, and test it in staging before production.
Smokeball’s API documents events across matters, contacts, tasks, memos, invoices, fees, expenses, staff, and stages, plus a dedicated error event. Subscribe only to what the workflow needs.
Archie is the assistant inside Smokeball. Carly is the one outside it.
Smokeball ships real AI, and it’s good. Archie launched in 2024 and was rebuilt in May 2026 with agentic multi-step reasoning, a Word add-in, an Outlook integration, and voice dictation. Per LawSites it can now create tasks, memos, and calendar events, and it reads across a matter’s billing, trust balances, and file notes.
Use it. It’s the best tool for “draft me a letter about this matter” and it’s right there.
The division of labor is that Archie is the built-in matter assistant, while Carly is an external assistant and workflow builder spanning Smokeball and the rest of the firm’s approved stack:
- It sends real email — Gmail and Outlook, your address, attachments included
- It chains steps across apps — one stage change can update the matter, email the client, book the next appointment on your calendar, post to Slack, and update your CRM as one flow
- It reaches almost anything — roughly 260 native connectors, plus any app with a public API through your own key
- It runs configured recurring work — internal task digests, inactive-matter reviews, and other scheduled checks
- The plumbing is free — Zapier-style workflow steps that don’t use AI run free, and AI agents start at $35/month
The structural difference:
Scheduled work is no longer the dividing line — ChatGPT and Claude both run tasks on a timer without anyone watching. The line that still holds is event triggers. Nothing kicks off because something happened in one of your apps; it kicks off because the clock said so, which means anything time-sensitive waits for the next run.
Our Claude and Smokeball guide covers where general AI assistants land on the same question. Short version: they’re excellent at “summarize these matters,” and there is nothing on that side watching for the stage change at 4:50pm.
Zapier, Make, and the MCP question
Smokeball has an official Zapier connector. Smokeball’s current support page lists eight triggers and nine actions, including new matters, contacts, memos, tasks, fees, and expenses. It is not on Make.
If you go probing for an MCP server you’ll find one at docs.smokeball.com/mcp that returns a valid handshake and identifies itself as “Smokeball.” It isn’t a product connector. It’s Mintlify’s automatic documentation-search server, which every site on that host gets for free — it reads Smokeball’s public marketing pages and cannot see a single matter. There’s no official Smokeball MCP server and no official Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot connector.
Carly provides the workflow layer, reaches Smokeball through the credentials and permissions you authorize, and can run from a configured event or schedule rather than requiring a chat prompt each time.
Connect Smokeball on the Carly integrations page. Firms weighing options more broadly may want our roundup of the best AI tools for lawyers.
Scope any assistant’s access deliberately and hold every vendor in the path to the same confidentiality terms you’d apply to a contract paralegal.
Getting access to the Smokeball API
Documentation is fully public at docs.smokeball.com, including the OpenAPI spec, so you can scope the entire build before requesting anything.
The API covers matters, contacts, files, billing, trust accounting, and tasks over OAuth 2.0, with a real staging environment at stagingapi.smokeball.com where you self-create test firm accounts before touching live data. Access is requested through your Smokeball account manager and requires the Prosper+ plan.
Don’t want to wait on that? The Zapier connector carries no approval process and no plan restriction, and it exposes the stage-change, new-matter, invoice, and task events that most of the automations above are built on. Carly works from either side.
Reference: Smokeball API limits and sharp edges
Auth is OAuth 2.0 with both grant types. Requests need an x-api-key header in addition to the Authorization bearer token, and sending only one produces a failure that doesn’t point at the missing header. Base URLs are region-locked across US, AU, and UK, production and staging; mixing regions produces confusing errors.
Rate limit is 5 requests per second, burst 5, identical in all three regions, enforced per client ID and per endpoint. Smokeball states increases are “only granted in exceptional circumstances,” so design for it rather than planning to ask. Backfilling matter history is slow by design.
Webhook subscriptions silently vanish on re-auth. This is the one that will break your integration. Effective May 30, 2025, subscriptions are automatically removed when a refresh token expires or a firm revokes access. Your integration keeps running, the events stop, nothing tells you. Re-check and recreate after every token refresh.
Delivery contract: 10-second timeout, HMAC SHA256 signature over Timestamp|RequestId|ClientId, no ordering guarantee (a contact.updated can arrive before contact.created), duplicates expected, so make processing idempotent.
Two things Smokeball does better than most: threading a RequestId header through your own API calls lets you filter out webhooks your own writes triggered, killing echo loops. And because writes are eventually consistent, a dedicated error event tells you when a request you already got a 2xx for failed downstream.
Scope changes need a fresh review each time, staging first.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can you automate with the Smokeball API?
The API can support workflows around matters, contacts, tasks, memos, billing records, expenses, and files. A safe first set is internal: create standard intake tasks for a new matter, send overdue-task digests, surface inactive matters, or place new fees and expenses in a billing-review queue. Client messages, collections, deadlines, and substantive matter changes need firm-approved controls and review.
Do I need Smokeball API credentials to automate it?
Not for every workflow. The official Zapier connector exposes eight documented triggers and nine actions, which may cover simple event-started work. Raw API access is requested through your account manager and requires the Prosper+ plan when Carly needs capabilities beyond that connector.
What are the Smokeball API rate limits?
5 requests per second with a burst of 5, identical across the US, AU, and UK regions, enforced per client ID and per endpoint. Smokeball states increases are granted only in exceptional circumstances.
Why did my Smokeball webhooks stop firing?
Most likely a re-authentication. Since May 30, 2025, Smokeball automatically removes webhook subscriptions when a refresh token expires or a firm revokes access, and nothing notifies you. Subscriptions have to be recreated after every token refresh.
What is Smokeball Archie, and how is it different from Carly?
Archie is Smokeball’s built-in AI matter assistant, rebuilt in May 2026 with agentic reasoning and Word and Outlook add-ins. Carly is an external assistant and workflow builder: it updates approved Smokeball records on request and can run configured cross-app work from a supported event or recurring schedule.
Does Smokeball have an MCP server?
Not a product one. The MCP server at docs.smokeball.com/mcp is Mintlify’s automatic documentation-search server, which reads public docs and cannot access firm data. Smokeball publishes no official Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot connector.
More: Best AI tools for lawyers · Best AI tools for law firms · Claude + Smokeball · Best AI workflow automation tools
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