| name | source-watch |
| description | Check a web page or feed for something worth telling the user about, remembering what was already reported so nothing repeats. Use when the user asks to watch, monitor, or check a URL for changes, new items, or a condition being met. |
| license | MIT |
| version | 1.0.0 |
| metadata | {"gaia":{"security_tier":"community","permissions":["network:read"],"tools_required":["fetch_page","recall","remember"],"provenance":{"source":"starter-pack"}}} |
Source Watch
The generic watcher. Fetch a source, decide whether anything matches, suppress
what was already reported, and say something only when there is news. Every
other watcher in this pack is a fork of this one.
Configure
The user supplies these; ask for any that are missing before the first run.
| Setting | Meaning | Example |
|---|
| Source | The URL to fetch | https://example.com/releases |
| Match | What counts as interesting | "any version above 3.0" |
| Memory key | Where seen items are recorded | watch:example-releases |
Procedure
- Recall what was already reported.
recall(query="<memory key>", limit=50). This is what stops the watcher
telling the user the same thing every run.
- Fetch the source.
fetch_page(url). If the fetch fails, report the
failure and stop — an empty page is not "no news", and treating it as such is
how a watcher silently dies.
- Extract the candidate items. Titles, versions, prices, listings —
whatever the source is a list of. Keep a stable identifier per item so step 4
can compare across runs.
- Apply the match, then drop every item whose identifier already appeared in
step 1.
- Report or stay quiet. If nothing new matched, say "no new matches" in one
line. Do not pad a quiet run into a paragraph.
- Record what you reported.
remember(fact="<memory key>: <identifier> — <one-line summary>", category="fact")
for each new item, so the next run suppresses it.
Honest limits
- This runs when you ask it to. GAIA's scheduler can run a recurring
prompt (
gaia schedule add --cron ... --prompt ...), but it cannot yet run a
skill on a schedule — --skill is rejected at creation time. Until that is
wired, "watching" means you invoke the skill and it checks.
- Step 1 and step 6 need memory enabled. If the
recall / remember tools are
absent, the watcher still works but repeats itself every run — say so rather
than pretending it de-duplicated.
- Fetch only pages you are allowed to poll, and do not hammer a source.
Fork this
Copy the directory, rename it and its name field, then specialize step 3
(what an item is) and step 4 (what counts as interesting). price-watch in this
pack is exactly that fork.
