WatchBot 🤖

A self-hosted web change tracker. Add URLs, set a polling interval, and WatchBot will notify you whenever the content changes — with an AI-generated summary of what changed.

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Features

• Watch any URL — monitors visible text content and detects changes on a configurable interval
• AI change summaries — uses Claude (Anthropic) to summarise what changed in plain English
• WatchBot Resource Finder — describe a topic and get 30 curated URL suggestions to monitor
• Real-time updates — live push via Server-Sent Events; no page refresh needed
• Browser notifications — opt-in push notifications via Service Worker
• Change history — stacked per-tracker log of all detected changes with unread indicators
• Flag changes — pin individual change entries so they are never deleted; flagged entries survive bulk history deletes
• Expand / Collapse all — one-click toggle for all change history panels from the toolbar
• Drag-to-reorder — organise your WatchBots in any order
• User accounts — JWT-based auth with registration and login
• Admin panel — manage users, roles, tracker limits, impersonate users for debugging
• Dark mode — follows system preference (Material-style UI)

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Server	Node.js, Express
Database	SQLite (via better-sqlite3)
Auth	JWT in httpOnly cookies, bcrypt
Frontend	Vanilla JS, single-page (public/index.html)
AI	Anthropic Claude API (optional)
Push	Web Push / Service Worker

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Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• An Anthropic API key (optional — AI summaries and resource finder are disabled gracefully without one)

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Setup

1. Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/gbot/watchbot.git
cd watchbot
npm install

2. Configure environment

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env:

PORT=3000
JWT_SECRET=your_long_random_secret_here
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_anthropic_api_key_here   # optional
CHECK_CONCURRENCY=5                              # optional: max parallel checks (default 5)
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://your-app.example.com # optional: comma-separated allowed origins for credentialed CORS

JWT_SECRET should be a long random string. Generate one with: node -e "console.log(require('crypto').randomBytes(48).toString('hex'))"

3. Start the server

npm start

Or with auto-reload for development:

npm run dev   # requires nodemon

Open http://localhost:3000.

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First Run

On first start, an admin account is automatically created. Check the server console output for the credentials. Change the password immediately via the account settings after logging in.

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Project Structure

watchbot/
├── server/
│   └── index.js        # Express server, all API routes, scheduler
├── public/
│   ├── index.html      # Single-page frontend application
│   ├── app.js          # Frontend logic
│   ├── style.css       # Styles
│   ├── sw.js           # Service Worker for browser notifications
│   └── icon.svg        # App icon
├── data/               # SQLite database (auto-created, git-ignored)
├── .env.example        # Environment variable template
└── package.json

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Environment Variables

Variable	Required	Description
PORT	No	HTTP port (default: 3000)
JWT_SECRET	Yes	Secret key for signing JWT tokens
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	No	Enables AI change summaries and resource finder
CHECK_CONCURRENCY	No	Max parallel tracker checks (default: 5)
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS	No	Comma-separated origin allowlist for credentialed CORS (e.g. https://app.example.com,https://admin.example.com). If unset, server allows only same-origin browser access; non-production also allows localhost on PORT.

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License

MIT