Document merged contacts behavior in Contacts API#454
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Clarify that contacts merged via POST /contacts/merge are not retrievable through the API. The source contact returns 404 on GET, is excluded from search results, and does not appear in list endpoints. Applied to all API versions (2.7-2.15 + Preview). Fixes intercom/intercom#453610 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Replace /reference/merge-a-lead-and-a-user relative links with plain text endpoint references (POST /contacts/merge) to stay consistent with the developer-docs companion PR. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
VedranZoricic
approved these changes
Apr 16, 2026
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Why?
Customers using the Contacts API encounter unexpected 404 errors when retrieving contacts that have been merged, and merged contacts silently disappear from search and list results. This causes broken sync pipelines and confusion, as reported in:
The behavior is expected (merged contacts are soft-deleted) but was not documented in any of the affected endpoints.
How?
Add warning/info admonitions to the merge, get, list, and search contacts endpoint descriptions across all API versions (2.7–2.15 + Preview), explaining that merged source contacts return 404, are excluded from search, and don't appear in list results.
Companion to:
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