Polling for results

There's no webhook or server-sent event yet — polling Retrieve a video generation is the only way to know when a generation finishes. This guide is a minimal loop that does it correctly: backs off, has a hard timeout, and distinguishes retryable errors from ones that mean stop.

async function waitForVideo(id, { timeoutMs = 5 * 60_000, intervalMs = 3000 } = {}) {
  const deadline = Date.now() + timeoutMs;

  while (Date.now() < deadline) {
    const res = await fetch(`https://api.swishx.com/v1/videos/${id}`, {
      headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.SWISHX_API_KEY}` },
    });

    if (!res.ok && res.status !== 429) {
      throw new Error(`Unexpected response: ${res.status}`);
    }

    const video = await res.json();

    if (video.status === "succeeded") return video;
    if (video.status === "failed" || video.status === "canceled") {
      throw new Error(video.error?.message ?? `Generation ${video.status}`);
    }

    await new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, intervalMs));
  }

  throw new Error(`Timed out waiting for ${id}`);
}

Why 3 seconds

Most generations move through all six pipeline stages in under two minutes. Polling faster than every ~2–3 seconds mostly burns your rate limit budget without getting you the result any sooner — see Rate limits for the exact per-minute cap.

Don't poll forever

Always set a deadline. A generation stuck in processing well past a few minutes is unusual enough to be worth surfacing as an error in your own system, not silently retried indefinitely.

Why 3 seconds

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