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Bots that watch files, windows and services and alert. 0 bots in this category.
Monitoring listings watch a source and report what changed since the last run: prices, stock levels, postings, page contents, files. The category is defined by repetition rather than volume - these bots are built to be scheduled, to keep a local baseline, and to produce a diff you can read instead of a fresh inventory each time. A bot that collects data once and stops is filed under Scraping.
Expect a first run that records a baseline and reports nothing, and later runs that separate what moved from what did not. Listings publish the fields they compare on, the flags they raise when a value cannot be parsed, and the files each run writes, so a silent failure cannot pass for a quiet result. Delivery is deliberately yours: the bot writes files, and turning those files into an alert is a step no listing claims to do for you.
Launchers are the same four artifacts on every listing - a Windows .exe and .sh scripts for macOS Apple Silicon, macOS Intel, and Linux - so scheduling is a matter of pointing your operating system's scheduler at the file: Task Scheduler on Windows, launchd or cron on macOS and Linux. Restore the executable bit on the shell-script platforms, clear the macOS quarantine attribute, and give the run a working directory you control, because that is where the change files accumulate.
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Monitoring bots: frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between monitoring and scraping?
- Scraping produces a dataset from one run. Monitoring produces a difference between runs: the bot stores what it saw last time, compares, and reports what moved. Monitoring listings are built to be run repeatedly on a schedule, and their output is a change record rather than a fresh inventory.
- Do monitoring bots send me alerts?
- Not by themselves. A monitoring launcher writes its results to files beside itself; delivery is yours to wire up. The honest pattern is a scheduled run plus whatever reads the output - a script watching the file, a spreadsheet import, or your own notification tool. Listings state their delivery destinations on the Output tab.
- What does a baseline run mean?
- The first run has nothing to compare against, so it records the observed values as a baseline and reports no changes. From the second run onwards the bot diffs against the most recent stored value. An empty change file after a scheduled run is the good-news case, not a failure.
- How often should a monitoring bot run?
- As often as a patient human would check by hand, which for most watch lists is once or twice a day. Every listing carries a responsible-use notice, and automated access at machine speed can breach a target's terms and get your address blocked.
- Where is the monitoring history kept?
- On your machine, beside the launcher. Nothing is stored in the cloud by the directory, which also means the history is only as durable as your own files: losing them restarts the baseline.