Fathom Platform Help

Step 1 — Gather context

If references/learnings.md exists, read it first for accumulated Fathom knowledge.

1. What are you trying to do?

   • A) Configure Fathom account/team/plan or understand pricing tiers
   • B) Build a backend integration (API, webhooks, OAuth, SDK)
   • C) Troubleshoot webhook delivery / HMAC signature verification
   • D) Push transcripts/summaries into CRM, data warehouse, or Slack
   • E) Troubleshoot bot joining / Google Meet security flag / Teams/Zoom capture
   • F) Evaluate Fathom vs alternatives — route to /sales-note-taker

2. Which auth path?

   • A) Personal API key (single user, X-Api-Key header)
   • B) OAuth 2.0 app (multi-tenant integration, Marketplace listing)
   • C) Not sure yet

3. Which Fathom plan?

   • A) Free
   • B) Premium ($20/mo, $16 annual) — for individuals
   • C) Team ($19/user/mo, 2-user min)
   • D) Business ($34/user/mo, 2-user min) — CRM sync
   • E) Special: Qualified Portfolio, nonprofit, Gong switchover

Skip-ahead rule: if the user's prompt already has the context, skip to Step 2.

Step 2 — Route or answer directly

User situation	Route to
"Fathom vs Fireflies vs Gong vs Avoma — which should we pick"	/sales-note-taker {question}
"Review this Fathom recording and score it"	/sales-call-review {question}
"Manager coaching program using Fathom recordings"	/sales-coaching {question}
"Build a generic Zapier/Make/n8n workflow"	/sales-integration {question}
Anything Fathom-platform-specific (API, webhooks, pricing, integrations, bot behavior)	Stay here

When routing, use the exact command: /sales-{skill} {user's original question}.

Step 3 — Fathom platform reference

Read references/platform-guide.md for the full platform reference — modules, pricing tiers, integrations, plan-gated features, special programs.

Read references/fathom-api-reference.md for verbatim API docs — endpoints, request/response schemas, OAuth flow, webhook HMAC verification, rate limits, SDK methods.

Answer using only the relevant section. Don't dump the entire reference.

Step 4 — Actionable guidance

Once you have the relevant reference content:

1. For API/webhook questions — give a concrete code snippet (cURL, Python, or TypeScript based on user's stack), note the auth header or OAuth scope required, and flag the 60-req/min rate limit if the operation loops over many recordings.
2. For transcript pipeline design — recommend webhook-first (create one via POST /webhooks with include_transcript=true and the right triggered_for array) and fall back to polling GET /meetings?created_after=...&cursor=... for backfill/reconciliation. For OAuth apps, always use the separate GET /recordings/{id}/transcript endpoint (the inline include_transcript param is disabled for OAuth).
3. For plan/pricing questions — Team/Business require a 2-user minimum and cap at max 3 CRM users per domain. CRM sync is Business-only.
4. For bot/capture issues — Google Meet has recently flagged Fathom's default bot mode as a security concern; point at the "Bot-free capture" setting or native Zoom/Teams recording integration as a workaround.

If you discover a gotcha, workaround, or tip not covered in references/learnings.md, append it there with today's date.

Gotchas

Best-effort from research (2026-04) — review pricing tier limits and plan-gated features before quoting customers.

• API keys are user-scoped, not workspace-scoped. An admin's key only sees their own recordings plus team-shared ones — it does NOT unlock other users' unshared meetings. For team-wide access, use OAuth with each user's consent or list team members and have each authorize.
• OAuth apps cannot use include_transcript or include_summary query params on GET /meetings. Must fetch these separately via GET /recordings/{recording_id}/transcript and GET /recordings/{recording_id}/summary. Plan this into pipelines — it's 1 extra API call per meeting for OAuth builds.
• Create-webhook requires at least one of include_transcript, include_crm_matches, include_summary, or include_action_items to be true. An empty payload is rejected.
• Rate limit is 60 calls/minute, user-based (not key-based). Creating multiple API keys won't raise it. Bulk backfills must respect this — queue requests and handle 429 with the RateLimit-Reset header.
• Webhook signatures use Svix-style HMAC-SHA256 with three headers (webhook-id, webhook-timestamp, webhook-signature). The secret string starts with whsec_ — strip that prefix and base64-decode the remainder before HMACing. Signed content is ${id}.${timestamp}.${raw_body}. Verify timestamp within 5 minutes to prevent replay.
• Team/Business plans require 2-user minimum and cap at max 3 CRM users per domain. This is a common surprise when quoting small teams.
• SDK 0.0.30 introduced breaking changes in both Python and TypeScript — if pinning an older version, consult sdks/breaking-changes/* before upgrading.
• Google Meet security flag: as of late 2025/early 2026 Google Meet flags Fathom's default bot mode as a security risk and may block it. Bot-free capture (native Zoom/Meet app integration) is the workaround.

Related skills

• /sales-note-taker — Picking a note-taker (Fathom vs Fireflies vs Avoma vs Gong vs Otter vs Fellow vs Grain vs Sembly vs Read.ai) and cross-vendor integration patterns
• /sales-call-review — Review a specific Fathom recording and score against MEDDPICC/SPIN/Challenger
• /sales-coaching — Use Fathom recordings in coaching programs, onboarding, certifications
• /sales-integration — Zapier/Make/n8n workflows to move Fathom data to other tools
• /sales-salesloft — Pair Fathom meetings with Salesloft cadence engagement
• /sales-zoominfo — Alternative conversation intelligence via Chorus if Fathom doesn't fit
• /sales-do — Not sure which skill to use? The router matches any sales objective to the right skill. Install: npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-do -a claude-code -y

Examples

Example 1: Transcripts not arriving in Snowflake

User says: "I built a webhook receiver for Fathom but transcripts aren't showing up in Snowflake — webhooks hit but payload looks wrong" Skill does:

1. Confirms webhook was created with include_transcript=true (otherwise payload has no transcript body)
2. Walks through HMAC verification (whsec_ prefix strip, signed content format, 5-min timestamp tolerance)
3. Recommends a reconcile-poll pattern: daily GET /meetings?created_after={yesterday} to catch any webhook deliveries that failed
4. Flags the 60-req/min rate limit — if reconciliation fetches many transcripts, queue with Retry-After Result: Correct webhook payload shape + reconcile-poll fallback so no transcripts get lost.

Example 2: Multi-tenant app OAuth design

User says: "Building a SaaS that lets each customer connect their Fathom — do I use API keys or OAuth?" Skill does:

1. Recommends OAuth (API keys are user-scoped and don't scale to multi-tenant)
2. Lists the OAuth steps — register at fathom.video/marketplace_applications/new, exchange code for tokens, implement TokenStore with persistent storage (SQLite/Postgres/Redis), never use newTokenStore() in production
3. Flags that OAuth apps cannot use include_transcript/include_summary on the /meetings endpoint — must fetch per-recording, so plan for N extra calls per listing page
4. Notes public_api is currently the only OAuth scope Result: OAuth architecture plan with token storage, redirect URI, and N+1 call pattern for transcripts.

Example 3: Free tier vs Premium vs Team

User says: "We're 4 reps on Fathom free — what's the cheapest plan that gives us HubSpot sync?" Skill does:

1. HubSpot sync requires Business tier ($34/user/mo, $25 annual)
2. 4 reps × $25 annual = $100/mo (not $20/mo as the free tier suggests)
3. Flags the 2-user minimum and max-3-CRM-users-per-domain caps
4. Suggests Qualified Portfolio Program (if they're VC-backed) — up to 2 years free Result: Concrete monthly cost + applicable discount paths.

Troubleshooting

Webhook fires but signature verification fails

Cause: Not stripping whsec_ prefix before decoding, or comparing raw bytes instead of base64-encoded strings Solution: base64.b64decode(secret.split('_')[1]) — HMAC the signed content ${webhook-id}.${webhook-timestamp}.${raw_body} (must be raw body, NOT JSON-parsed-and-re-serialized), base64-encode the digest, compare against each signature in the webhook-signature header (strip version prefix v1, first). Verify timestamp within 5 minutes.

429 Too Many Requests during bulk backfill

Cause: Exceeding the global 60 calls/minute per-user rate limit Solution: Read the RateLimit-Remaining and RateLimit-Reset headers on every response. Queue requests at 1/second (max sustainable). For OAuth apps fetching N meetings + N transcripts + N summaries, that's 3N calls — budget accordingly. Adding more API keys to the same user account doesn't help (limit is user-based, not key-based).

OAuth app transcripts are empty

Cause: OAuth apps cannot use include_transcript=true on GET /meetings — the field silently returns null Solution: After listing meetings, fetch transcript per recording with GET /recordings/{recording_id}/transcript. Same for summary — use GET /recordings/{recording_id}/summary. Both endpoints support async mode via destination_url query param, which POSTs the result to your URL instead of returning inline (useful for large backfills that would otherwise time out).

• Self-improving: If you discover something not covered here, append it to references/learnings.md with today's date.