Site Spy
Productivity
website change monitoring
SHOW HN2026
How HN took it
20 positive, 11 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 5 critical, out of 39 comments about the project. Thread score +0.41.
Idea: 8 for, 0 againstExecution: 3 for, 0 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 againstPricing: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Element picker and text diffs are well executed
From 1 comment
As a (former) reporter, site monitoring is a big part of what I do on a daily basis and I used many, many such services. I can attest that, at least from the landing page, this…
ahmedfromtunis on HN
RSS output is useful for composable workflows
From 2 comments
This is directly useful for financial data monitoring. I've been thinking about watching specific elements on energy report pages (EIA weekly inventory releases, OPEC statements)…
multidude on HNLooks good! RSS is underrated for this honestly. I'd rather check a feed when I want than get pinged at 2am because a sidebar changed.
ramgale on HN
Objections
Built on changedetection.io fork with inadequate attribution at first
From 1 comment
I got claude to reverse engineer the extension and compare to changedetection and here's what it came up with. Apologies for clanker slop but I think its in poor taste to not…
msp26 on HN
Service may disappear; trust concerns
From 1 comment
Very good! This is something that existed in the past and I used successfully, but services like this tend to disappear
bananaflag on HN
Requests
Per-site rate limit control and longer check intervals
From 1 comment
Buddy I love you! I have wanted this for so long! My job relies on following many German laws, bureaucracy pages and the like. In the long run I want specific changes on external…
nicbou on HN
Email alerts option
From 1 comment
Nice work! RSS feed is quite handy. Email alert would be a nice option as well.
tonyekh on HN
Questions
How anti-bot and Cloudflare captchas are handled
From 2 comments
Curious how you're thinking about getting around anti-bot protection. I scrape a lot and I've noticed many highly trafficked sites investing in anti-bot measures recently, with…
rozumem on HNWill this work on websites that may have Cloudflare captchas popping from time to time?
electrotype on HN
How element selectors survive DOM or class name changes
From 1 comment
i've actually been looking for something like this. full-page change monitors get noisy really fast, especially on sites with lots of small UI changes. being able to watch a…
BloodAndCode on HN
Alternatives named
changedetection.io
From 1 comment
I like https://github.com/dgtlmoon/changedetection.io for this. Open source and free to run locally or use their Saas service.
xnx on HN
urlwatch
From 1 comment
There's also https://github.com/thp/urlwatch/ - (not aware of any SaaS offer - self-hosted it is).
raphman on HN
Visualping
From 1 comment
That looks nice, I use the free plan of https://visualping.io for some software changelogs, RSS feeds are a paid feature. Will check this out.
pentagrama on HN
Wachete
From 1 comment
Buddy I love you! I have wanted this for so long! My job relies on following many German laws, bureaucracy pages and the like. In the long run I want specific changes on external…
nicbou on HN