web-monitor

name	web-monitor
description	Monitor web pages for content changes and get alerts. Track URLs, detect updates, view diffs. Use when asked to watch a website, track changes on a page, monitor for new posts/content, set up page change alerts, or check if a site has been updated. Supports CSS selectors for targeted monitoring.

Web Monitor

Track web pages for changes. Stores snapshots, computes diffs, supports CSS selectors.

Triggers

Activate this skill when the user wants to:

• Watch a website for content changes
• Track price changes, new posts, or updated content on a page
• Set up page change alerts or notifications
• Check if a site has been updated since last visit
• Monitor a specific section of a page (with CSS selector)

NOT For

• Real-time alerting on dynamic topics — use the topic-monitor skill for news/topic monitoring with importance scoring
• Full page archival — this tracks diffs, not full crawl archives
• JavaScript-heavy SPAs — the monitor fetches raw HTML; dynamic content rendered by JS may not be captured accurately
• Monitoring APIs or webhooks — use cron + exec for structured data endpoints

---

Quick Start

# Add a URL to watch
uv run --with beautifulsoup4 python scripts/monitor.py add "https://example.com" --name "Example"

# Add with CSS selector (monitor specific section)
uv run --with beautifulsoup4 python scripts/monitor.py add "https://example.com/pricing" -n "Pricing" -s ".pricing-table"

# Check all watched URLs for changes
uv run --with beautifulsoup4 python scripts/monitor.py check

# Check one specific URL
uv run --with beautifulsoup4 python scripts/monitor.py check "Example"

# List watched URLs
uv run --with beautifulsoup4 python scripts/monitor.py list

# View last diff
uv run --with beautifulsoup4 python scripts/monitor.py diff "Example"

# View current snapshot
uv run --with beautifulsoup4 python scripts/monitor.py snapshot "Example" --lines 50

# Remove
uv run --with beautifulsoup4 python scripts/monitor.py remove "Example"

Commands

Command	Args	Description
add	<url> [-n name] [-s selector]	Add URL to watch, take initial snapshot
remove	<url-or-name>	Stop watching a URL
list	[-f json]	List all watched URLs with stats
check	[url-or-name] [-f json]	Check for changes (all or one)
diff	<url-or-name>	Show last recorded diff
snapshot	<url-or-name> [-l lines]	Show current snapshot

Output Symbols

• 🔔 CHANGED — page content changed (shows diff preview)
• ✅ No changes
• 📸 Initial snapshot taken
• ❌ Error fetching

Data

Stored in ~/.web-monitor/ (override with WEB_MONITOR_DIR env var). For OpenClaw workspace integration, set WEB_MONITOR_DIR=$WORKSPACE/data/web-monitor (where $WORKSPACE is your agent workspace path).

• watches.json — watch list config
• snapshots/ — stored page content + diffs

Tips

• Use --selector to monitor specific elements (prices, article lists, etc.)
• Use --format json for programmatic checking (heartbeat integration)
• CSS selectors require beautifulsoup4 (included via --with flag)
• Text is normalized to reduce noise from timestamps, whitespace, ads