AssemblyAI Production Checklist

Overview

Complete checklist for deploying AssemblyAI-powered transcription services to production with health checks, monitoring, and rollback procedures.

Prerequisites

• Staging environment tested and verified
• Production API key from https://www.assemblyai.com/app/account
• Deployment pipeline configured
• Monitoring stack ready

Instructions

Pre-Deployment Checklist

API Key & Auth

• Production API key stored in secrets manager (not env files)
• Key is separate from dev/staging keys
• Temporary token endpoint configured for browser streaming
• API key rotation procedure documented

Code Quality

• All transcript.status === 'error' cases handled
• Rate limit retry with exponential backoff implemented
• No hardcoded API keys or audio URLs
• PII redaction enabled for sensitive audio content
• Webhook URL uses HTTPS
• Audio file upload size validated before submission

Error Handling

• 429 (rate limit) triggers retry with backoff
• 5xx (server error) triggers retry with backoff
• 401 (auth error) triggers alert, no retry
• transcript.status === 'error' logged with transcript ID and error message
• WebSocket disconnect triggers reconnection for streaming
• LeMUR errors handled (invalid transcript ID, context too long)

Performance

• Transcript results cached where appropriate
• Concurrent transcription jobs limited via queue (p-queue or similar)
• Webhook processing is async (don't block the response)
• Long audio files processed with webhook_url instead of polling

Health Check Implementation

import { AssemblyAI } from 'assemblyai';

const client = new AssemblyAI({
  apiKey: process.env.ASSEMBLYAI_API_KEY!,
});

export async function healthCheck(): Promise<{
  status: 'healthy' | 'degraded' | 'down';
  assemblyai: { connected: boolean; latencyMs: number };
}> {
  const start = Date.now();
  try {
    // List transcripts as a lightweight connectivity check
    await client.transcripts.list({ limit: 1 });
    return {
      status: 'healthy',
      assemblyai: { connected: true, latencyMs: Date.now() - start },
    };
  } catch (error) {
    return {
      status: 'degraded',
      assemblyai: { connected: false, latencyMs: Date.now() - start },
    };
  }
}

Webhook-Based Processing (Recommended for Production)

// Instead of polling, use webhooks for transcription completion
const transcript = await client.transcripts.submit({
  audio: audioUrl,
  webhook_url: 'https://your-app.com/webhooks/assemblyai',
  webhook_auth_header_name: 'X-Webhook-Secret',
  webhook_auth_header_value: process.env.ASSEMBLYAI_WEBHOOK_SECRET!,
  speaker_labels: true,
  sentiment_analysis: true,
});

console.log('Submitted:', transcript.id, '(webhook will fire on completion)');

// Webhook handler
import express from 'express';

app.post('/webhooks/assemblyai', express.json(), async (req, res) => {
  // Verify auth header
  const secret = req.headers['x-webhook-secret'];
  if (secret !== process.env.ASSEMBLYAI_WEBHOOK_SECRET) {
    return res.status(401).json({ error: 'Unauthorized' });
  }

  const { transcript_id, status } = req.body;

  if (status === 'completed') {
    // Fetch full transcript
    const transcript = await client.transcripts.get(transcript_id);
    await processCompletedTranscript(transcript);
  } else if (status === 'error') {
    console.error(`Transcript ${transcript_id} failed:`, req.body.error);
    await handleFailedTranscript(transcript_id, req.body.error);
  }

  res.status(200).json({ received: true });
});

Monitoring & Alerting

Alert	Condition	Severity
API unreachable	Health check fails 3x consecutive	P1
High error rate	>5% of transcriptions fail	P2
Rate limited	429 errors > 5/min	P2
Auth failure	Any 401 response	P1
Slow transcription	Queue wait > 5 min	P3
Webhook delivery failure	Webhook retries exhausted	P2

Gradual Rollout

# 1. Pre-flight: verify AssemblyAI API is healthy
curl -s https://status.assemblyai.com/api/v2/status.json | jq '.status.description'

# 2. Deploy to canary (10% traffic)
# 3. Monitor error rate and latency for 10 minutes
# 4. If healthy, roll to 50%, then 100%
# 5. Keep previous version ready for instant rollback

Output

• Production-ready deployment with health checks
• Webhook-based transcription processing
• Monitoring and alerting configuration
• Gradual rollout strategy

Error Handling

Issue	Detection	Response
API key invalid in prod	401 on first call	Rotate key immediately
Transcription backlog	Queue size growing	Scale workers, check rate limits
Webhook endpoint down	Missed completion events	Poll for stuck transcripts
Audio upload timeout	Large file failures	Increase timeout, validate file size

Resources

• AssemblyAI Webhooks Guide
• AssemblyAI Status Page
• AssemblyAI Account Management

Next Steps

For version upgrades, see assemblyai-upgrade-migration.