pulse create: pulse is created, then the CLI fails parsing services/environments in the response

[ded]

Summary

rootly pulse create (v0.5.0) creates the pulse successfully, then exits non-zero because it can't parse the API's response:

Error: failed to create pulse: failed to parse response: json: cannot unmarshal array into Go struct field .data.attributes.services of type struct { Data []struct { Attributes struct { Name string "json:\"name\"" } "json:\"attributes\"" } "json:\"data\"" }

The pulse is recorded in Rootly (correct summary, source, services, environments, labels, refs). Only the CLI's post-create parsing fails, so the command reports failure for a request that succeeded.

Impact

rootlyhq/pulse-action (v2.0.0) builds its image from the latest rootly-cli release, so every GitHub Actions pulse now fails its step with the error above. Workflows that don't set continue-on-error go red on every deploy, even though the pulse arrived.

Reproduce

rootly pulse create \
  --services=<a service slug> \
  --environments=<an environment slug> \
  --labels="service=email,ref=main" \
  --source=github-actions \
  "Deployed email to staging"

The API returns 201. The CLI prints the error above and exits 1.

Cause

CreatePulseCLI in internal/api/client.go expects services and environments in JSON:API relationship form:

Services *struct {
    Data []struct {
        Attributes struct {
            Name string `json:"name"`
        } `json:"attributes"`
    } `json:"data"`
} `json:"services"`

But POST /v1/pulses (and GET /v1/pulses) returns them as flat arrays of objects inside data.attributes:

"services": [
  { "id": "…", "name": "Email", "slug": "email", … }
],
"environments": [
  { "id": "…", "name": "Staging", "slug": "staging", … }
]

json.Unmarshal of an array into that struct fails, which aborts the whole parse. The same mismatch applies to environments.

Suggested fix

Model both fields as flat arrays, matching the API:

Services []struct {
    Name string `json:"name"`
} `json:"services"`
Environments []struct {
    Name string `json:"name"`
} `json:"environments"`

Then map s.Name / e.Name into pulse.Services / pulse.Environments. Alternatively, treat a parse failure after a 2xx as a warning, since the pulse was created. A test in client_pulse_test.go with a real POST /v1/pulses response body that includes services and environments would catch this.

Environment

• rootly-cli v0.5.0 (latest, pulled by rootlyhq/pulse-action@22355de7941ef67a661e0873006ec17b33224fb5, v2.0.0)
• GitHub Actions, ubuntu-latest
• Observed 2026-09-24