specification: API Commons Rate Limits
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/RateLimits
provider: Matthews International
providerId: matthews-international
created: '2026-05-04'
# Provenance stamped 2026-08-11: this artifact was written by the API Evangelist
# bulk sweep dated 2026-05-04, not harvested from the provider. See roadmap#35.
# 2026-08-13: re-checked against the live provider surface. The absence of published
# rate limits is now a SEARCHED finding, not a scaffold assumption.
generated: '2026-08-13'
method: searched
source: https://www.matw.com/
modified: '2026-08-13'
reconciled: false
limit_count: 0
tags:
  - Memorialization
  - Branding
  - Industrial
  - Rate Limiting
description: Matthews International does not publish API rate limits because there is no public developer
  program. Any integration limits are negotiated inside the underlying solution contract (Memorialization,
  Industrial Technologies, SGK Brand Solutions) and are not externally documented.
notes: |
  limit_count is 0: Matthews International publishes ZERO rate limits, because it publishes no API.
  Re-verified 2026-08-13 — no developer portal, no API reference, no machine-readable spec on any
  Matthews-controlled host, and therefore no rate-limit headers to record.

  The scaffold-era `responseCodes` block asserting throttled=429 / serviceUnavailable=503 was REMOVED
  on 2026-08-13: it described status codes for an API that does not exist and no live response was
  ever observed. Likewise the entries under `policies` are API Evangelist client-side recommendations,
  not published Matthews policy, and are labelled as such.

  Set reconciled=true only if a public developer surface emerges.
sources:
  - https://www.matw.com/
evidence:
  - url: https://www.matw.com/sitemap.xml
    status: 200
    note: 368 URLs; no API, developer or documentation page among them.
  - url: https://api.matw.com/
    status: 0
    note: DNS NXDOMAIN. No host to observe a rate-limit header on.
limits:
  - name: Contract-scoped limit
    scope: customer-contract
    metric: varies
    limit: 'not publicly documented'
    applies:
      - MPERIA controller integrations (Matthews Marking Systems)
    notes: >-
      Matthews publishes no web API. Where an integration exists it is an on-premises MPERIA
      controller link (XML or command-line protocol over Ethernet or RS-232) governed by the
      equipment purchase contract, not by a published rate-limit policy. Nothing here was
      observed on a live HTTP response.
policies:
  - name: Backoff Strategy
    source: api-evangelist-recommendation
    description: >-
      NOT a published Matthews policy. General client-side guidance: exponential backoff with
      jitter on transient errors, and honor Retry-After if one is ever returned.
  - name: Contract-Scoped Limits
    source: api-evangelist-observation
    description: >-
      NOT a published Matthews policy. Any throughput, concurrency or polling-frequency
      obligation lives in the equipment or integration statement-of-work; there is no public
      developer doc that states one.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com