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Incremental Fetch

incremental-fetch

Build resilient data ingestion pipelines from APIs. Use when creating scripts that fetch paginated data from external APIs (Twitter, exchanges, any REST API) and need to track progress, avoid duplicates, handle rate limits, and support both incremental updates and historical backfills. Triggers: ...

SKILL.md

Full skill instructions

Incremental Fetch

Build data pipelines that never lose progress and never re-fetch existing data.

The Two Watermarks Pattern

Track TWO cursors to support both forward and backward fetching:

WatermarkPurposeAPI Parameter
newest_idFetch new data since last runsince_id
oldest_idBackfill older datauntil_id

A single watermark only fetches forward. Two watermarks enable:

  • Regular runs: fetch NEW data (since newest_id)
  • Backfill runs: fetch OLD data (until oldest_id)
  • No overlap, no gaps

Critical: Data vs Watermark Saving

These are different operations with different timing:

WhatWhen to SaveWhy
Data recordsAfter EACH pageResilience: interrupted on page 47? Keep 46 pages
WatermarksONCE at end of runCorrectness: only commit progress after full success
fetch page 1 → save records → fetch page 2 → save records → ... → update watermarks

Workflow Decision Tree

First run (no watermarks)?
├── YES → Full fetch (no since_id, no until_id)
└── NO → Backfill flag set?
    ├── YES → Backfill mode (until_id = oldest_id)
    └── NO → Update mode (since_id = newest_id)

Implementation Checklist

  1. Database: Create ingestion_state table (see patterns.md)
  2. Fetch loop: Insert records immediately after each API page
  3. Watermark tracking: Track newest/​oldest IDs seen in this run
  4. Watermark update: Save watermarks ONCE at end of successful run
  5. Retry: Exponential backoff with jitter
  6. Rate limits: Wait for reset or skip and record for next run

Pagination Types

This pattern works best with ID-based pagination (numeric IDs that can be compared). For other pagination types:

TypeAdaptation
Cursor/​tokenStore cursor string instead of ID; can't compare numerically
TimestampUse last_timestamp column; compare as dates
Offset/​limitStore page number; resume from last saved page

See references/​patterns.md for schemas and code examples.

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