Errors and limits

Bodies

Most routes: JSON, one error string, written to be shown to a person.

{ "error": "no such session" }

Schema validation failures return the validator’s shape, where message is a JSON string of the field errors:

{
  "success": false,
  "error": {
    "name": "ZodError",
    "message": "[{\"code\":\"too_small\",\"path\":[\"photos\"],\"message\":\"Too small: expected array to have >=1 items\"}]"
  }
}

Plain text in two cases: bearer failures (Unauthorized), and the byte routes, which return a bare 404 Not Found.

Statuses

Status	Means
400	Bad body or value, or a malformed Authorization header. Retrying is pointless.
401	Missing or wrong key, or no staff session.
404	No such event, set, session or gallery — or the gallery is not live yet.
409	Session already completed or cancelled, or completed concurrently. Re-read the queue.
413	Body over the contact form’s 16 KB.
422	Photo keys not in R2. missing lists them; nothing was written.
429	Over a rate limit. Wait a minute; there is no Retry-After.
500	Ours. Retry with backoff, then tell us.
502 / 503	Mail provider refused, or unconfigured.

Presigned PUTs answer from R2, not from this API: S3-shaped XML, and a 403 there is almost always a Content-Type that does not match the signature.

Rate limits

Routes	Limit
POST /api/auth/sign-in/*	10/min
POST /sets/:setId/sessions, POST /track, POST /contact, GET /gallery/:sessionId/zip	60/min
Everything else, /booth/* included	none

Keyed on CF-Connecting-IP and counted per colo, not globally: a lock on the door, not flood protection. 60 is loose because a venue shares one NAT IP.

{ "error": "Too many requests. Try again in a minute." }