website-monitor/task.md

Website Change Detection Monitor - Development Tasks

Project Setup

Environment & Infrastructure

• Initialize Git repository
• Set up project structure (monorepo or separate repos)
• Configure development environment
  • Node.js/npm or Python/pip
  • Docker for local development
  • Environment variables management
• Set up CI/CD pipeline
  • GitHub Actions or GitLab CI
  • Automated testing
  • Deployment automation
• Provision cloud infrastructure
  • Database (PostgreSQL)
  • Redis for queuing
  • Object storage (S3)
  • Application hosting

Development Tools

• Set up linting and formatting (ESLint/Prettier or Black/Flake8)
• Configure TypeScript/type checking
• Set up testing frameworks (Jest/Pytest)
• Configure logging and monitoring
• Set up local development database

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MVP Phase (Launch Fast)

1. Backend Core - Week 1-2

Database Schema

• Design and create database schema
  • Users table
  • Monitors table
  • Snapshots table
  • Alerts table
  • Add indexes for performance
• Set up database migrations
• Create seed data for development

Authentication & User Management

• Implement user registration
• Implement user login (email/password)
• JWT token generation and validation
• Password reset flow
• Email verification (optional for MVP)
• Basic user profile endpoints

Monitor Management API

• POST /monitors - Create new monitor
• GET /monitors - List user's monitors
• GET /monitors/:id - Get monitor details
• PUT /monitors/:id - Update monitor
• DELETE /monitors/:id - Delete monitor
• Input validation and sanitization
• URL validation and normalization

2. Monitoring Engine - Week 2-3

Page Fetching

• Implement HTTP fetcher (Axios/Got)
• Handle different response types (HTML, JSON, text)
• Implement timeout handling
• Add retry logic with exponential backoff
• User-agent rotation
• Respect robots.txt (optional)
• Rate limiting per domain

Change Detection

• Implement content hash comparison
• Implement text diff algorithm
  • Character-level diff
  • Line-level diff
• Store snapshots in database
• Calculate change percentage
• Determine if change is significant

Job Scheduling

• Set up Redis and Bull/BullMQ
• Create monitor check job
• Implement job scheduler
  • 5-minute interval
  • 30-minute interval
  • 6-hour interval
  • 24-hour interval
• Handle job failures and retries
• Job priority management
• Monitor queue health

3. Alert System - Week 3

Email Alerts

• Set up email service (SendGrid/Postmark)
• Create email templates
  • Change detected template
  • Error alert template
• Implement alert sending logic
• Track alert delivery status
• Alert throttling (max 1 per check)
• Unsubscribe functionality

Alert Management

• GET /alerts - List user's alerts
• Mark alerts as read
• Alert preferences per monitor

4. Frontend Core - Week 3-4

Setup & Layout

• Initialize Next.js project
• Set up Tailwind CSS
• Install and configure shadcn/ui
• Create main layout component
  • Navigation
  • User menu
  • Responsive design
• Set up React Query

Authentication Pages

• Login page
• Registration page
• Password reset page
• Protected route handling

Dashboard

• Dashboard layout
• Monitor list view
  • Status indicators
  • Last checked time
  • Last changed time
• Empty state (no monitors)
• Loading states
• Error handling

Monitor Management

• Create monitor form
  • URL input
  • Frequency selector
  • Name/description
• Edit monitor page
• Delete monitor confirmation
• Form validation

History & Diff Viewer

• History timeline component
  • Paginated list
  • Filter by status
• Diff viewer component
  • Side-by-side view
  • Unified view
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Line numbers
• Snapshot viewer (raw HTML)

5. Testing & Polish - Week 4

• Write unit tests for core functions
• Write API integration tests
• Write E2E tests for critical flows
• Performance testing
  • Page fetch speed
  • Diff calculation speed
• Security audit
  • SQL injection prevention
  • XSS prevention
  • CSRF protection
• Accessibility audit (WCAG AA)
• Browser compatibility testing

6. Deployment - Week 4

• Set up production environment
• Configure domain and SSL
• Deploy backend API
• Deploy frontend
• Set up monitoring and logging
  • Application logs
  • Error tracking (Sentry)
  • Uptime monitoring
• Create status page
• Load testing

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V1 Phase (People Pay)

7. Noise Reduction - Week 5-6

Automatic Filtering

• Build filter engine
• Implement cookie banner detection
  • CSS selector patterns
  • Common text patterns
• Implement timestamp detection
  • Date/time regex patterns
  • "Last updated" patterns
• Implement session ID filtering
• Test filter accuracy on common sites

Custom Ignore Rules

• Design ignore rule UI
• Implement regex-based text filtering
• Implement CSS selector exclusion
• Add rule testing/preview
• Save rules with monitor config
• Apply rules during diff calculation

8. Selective Monitoring - Week 6

Element Selection

• Implement CSS selector monitoring
• Build visual element picker
  • Inject selection overlay
  • Click-to-select interface
  • Show element path
• XPath support
• Multiple element monitoring
• Element naming/labeling

9. Keyword Alerts - Week 7

Keyword Engine

• Keyword matching logic
  • Appears/disappears detection
  • Count tracking
  • Threshold checks
• Regex support
• Multiple keyword rules per monitor
• AND/OR logic combinations
• Case sensitivity options

UI & Alerts

• Keyword rule builder UI
• Keyword match highlighting in diffs
• Keyword-specific alert templates
• Alert only on keyword match option

10. Advanced Alerting - Week 7-8

Digest Mode

• Aggregate changes into digest
• Daily digest scheduling
• Weekly digest scheduling
• Digest email template

Smart Throttling

• Quiet hours configuration
• Max alerts per hour/day
• Cooldown period settings
• Alert settings UI

Severity System

• Calculate change severity
  • Small/medium/large changes
  • Price changes = high severity
  • Layout-only = low severity
• Severity-based filtering
• Visual severity indicators

11. Billing & Subscriptions - Week 8-9

Stripe Integration

• Set up Stripe account
• Create products and prices
• Implement checkout flow
• Subscription management
  • Upgrade/downgrade
  • Cancel subscription
  • Resume subscription
• Payment method management
• Invoice history

Plan Gating

• Implement usage tracking
  • Monitor count
  • Check frequency
  • History retention
• Enforce plan limits
• Usage dashboard for users
• Upgrade prompts
• Billing alerts

12. Onboarding & UX - Week 9

• Welcome tour
• Example monitors (pre-configured)
• Monitor templates
  • Job postings
  • Price tracking
  • Product availability
• Improved empty states
• Contextual help tooltips
• Documentation site

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V2 Phase (Market Winner)

13. Visual Change Detection - Week 10-11

Screenshot System

• Set up Puppeteer/Playwright
• Implement screenshot capture
  • Full page screenshots
  • Specific element screenshots
• Screenshot storage optimization
• Screenshot viewer UI

Image Diff

• Implement pixel-based comparison
• Highlight changed regions
• Before/After carousel
• Visual diff overlay
• Layout shift detection

14. AI Summaries - Week 11-12

LLM Integration

• Set up OpenAI/Anthropic API
• Implement change summarization
  • Prompt engineering
  • Token optimization
• Change classification
  • Price change detection
  • Availability change
  • Policy update
  • Layout change
• Summary caching

Smart Alerts

• Summary in alert emails
• Classification-based filtering
• Confidence scoring
• Summary viewer UI

15. Complex Page Support - Week 12-13

JS Rendering

• Headless browser mode toggle
• Wait for network idle
• Wait for specific elements
• Dynamic content detection
• SPA support

Authentication

• Basic auth support
• Cookie storage
• Login flow automation
  • Record login steps
  • Replay login
• Session management
• Credential encryption

16. Integrations - Week 13-15

Webhook System

• Generic webhook POST
• Webhook testing
• Retry logic
• Webhook logs

Third-Party Services

• Slack integration
  • OAuth flow
  • Channel selection
  • Message formatting
• Discord webhooks
• Microsoft Teams connector
• RSS feed generation
  • Per-monitor feeds
  • Global feed
  • Authentication

API

• Design REST API
• API key management
• API documentation
  • OpenAPI spec
  • Interactive docs
• Rate limiting
• Webhooks for API users

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Power User Phase

17. Organization Features - Week 16

• Folders/projects system
• Tagging system
• Full-text search
• Advanced filtering
• Bulk operations
  • CSV import
  • Export history
  • Bulk edit
  • Bulk delete

18. Collaboration - Week 17-18

Team Workspaces

• Create workspace model
• Team invitation system
• Role-based permissions
• Shared monitors
• Audit logging

Communication

• Comments on changes
• Assignment system
• Team notifications
• Activity feed

19. Advanced Scheduling - Week 18-19

• Custom cron schedules
• Business hours only
• Timezone configuration
• Geo-distributed checks
  • Multiple check locations
  • Location comparison
• Adaptive frequency
  • Check more during changes
  • Back off when stable

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Ongoing Tasks

Marketing & Growth

• Create landing page
• Write blog posts for SEO
  • "How to monitor job postings"
  • "Track competitor prices"
  • "Monitor website availability"
• Create comparison pages (vs. competitors)
• Set up analytics (PostHog/Mixpanel)
• Email marketing campaigns
• Create demo video
• Social media presence

Support & Documentation

• Help center/knowledge base
• API documentation
• Video tutorials
• Customer support system
  • Email support
  • Chat support (Intercom/Crisp)
• FAQ page
• Troubleshooting guides

Optimization & Maintenance

• Performance monitoring
• Database optimization
• Query performance tuning
• Cost optimization
  • Cloud resource usage
  • Email sending costs
  • Storage costs
• Security updates
• Dependency updates
• Bug fixes and patches

Analytics & Iteration

• User behavior tracking
• Feature usage analytics
• A/B testing framework
• Customer feedback collection
• NPS surveys
• Churn analysis
• Conversion funnel optimization

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Risk Management

Technical Risks

• Risk: Blocked by anti-bot measures
  • Mitigation: Residential proxies, browser fingerprinting, rate limiting
• Risk: Scaling issues with thousands of checks
  • Mitigation: Distributed queue, horizontal scaling, caching
• Risk: High false positive rate
  • Mitigation: Better filtering, user feedback loop, ML training

Business Risks

• Risk: High infrastructure costs
  • Mitigation: Efficient caching, optimize storage, tiered plans
• Risk: Low conversion rate
  • Mitigation: Strong onboarding, free tier value, quick wins
• Risk: Competitive market
  • Mitigation: Focus on noise reduction, better UX, integrations

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Launch Checklist

Pre-Launch

• MVP features complete and tested
• Landing page live
• Pricing page finalized
• Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
• Payment processing tested
• Email deliverability tested
• Error monitoring configured
• Backup system tested

Launch Day

• Deploy to production
• Monitor error rates
• Watch server resources
• Test critical user flows
• Announce on social media
• Submit to directories (Product Hunt, etc.)
• Email early access list

Post-Launch

• Daily metric review (signups, monitors, errors)
• User feedback collection
• Bug triage and fixes
• Performance optimization
• Feature prioritization based on feedback