/api-health

Check the health and response times of the external CrossQuest Python API on Railway.

Instructions

Run health checks against both API endpoints and report results.

Check 1: Categories Endpoint

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "HTTP %{http_code} in %{time_total}s" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"guessed_words":{}}' \
  https://cross-questpython-production.up.railway.app/api/categories

Check 2: Full Categories Response

curl -s -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"guessed_words":{}}' \
  https://cross-questpython-production.up.railway.app/api/categories

Output Format

API Health Check
────────────────────────────────────
 Endpoint       Status    Time
────────────────────────────────────
 /categories    200 OK    1.23s
────────────────────────────────────

Interpret Results

• •Response time > 5s: Likely a cold start. Note: "Railway cold start detected. First request is slow, subsequent requests will be faster."
• •Response time > 15s: Server might be sleeping. Note: "Server appears to be waking from sleep. This is normal for Railway free/hobby tier."
• •Response time < 2s: Server is warm. Note: "API is responsive."
• •HTTP 5xx: Server error. Note: "Backend may be down or misconfigured."
• •Timeout (no response in 30s): Note: "API unreachable. Check Railway deployment status."

Also report:

• •Number of categories returned (from the JSON response)
• •Whether the response format is valid ({ categories: [...] })

Notes

• •The API is hosted on Railway and may have cold starts (15-30 seconds)
• •Do NOT test the /crossword endpoint in health check — it triggers expensive generation
• •The /categories endpoint is safe to call repeatedly