Web Monitor

**Quick judgment:** Web Monitor is a solid, CLI-based page change tracker suitable for technical users who need deterministic diffs and selector-based monitoring. It’s best when you want to script or automate checks for specific parts of a page (like pricing or article lists) and keep everything local. **What it does well:** - Adds and manages a watch list of URLs, with optional names and CSS selectors. - Stores normalized snapshots, computes diffs, and presents concise change previews. - Supports commands for adding, checking (all or one), listing, diffing, snapshot viewing, and removing watches. - Provides JSON output for `list`/`check`, making it easy to plug into cron jobs, CI, or custom alerting pipelines. - Keeps data under `~/.web-monitor` by default, which is predictable and local-only. **Risks and limitations:** - No built-in scheduler or alert transport; you must handle periodic execution and notifications (e.g., via cron, CI, or external scripts). - May be fragile on heavily dynamic or JavaScript-rendered sites, since it appears to work on static HTML fetched via HTTP. - CSS selectors can break when page structure changes, leading to missed changes or noisy diffs. - Network or site-side issues (rate limits, CAPTCHAs, anti-bot protections) could reduce reliability. - Potential compliance concerns if used against sites whose terms restrict automated access; users must ensure they respect target sites’ ToS and robots policies. **Recommended scenarios:** - You’re a developer or power user who wants a lightweight, scriptable way to monitor specific pages or page sections for content changes. - You need diffs and snapshot history, not just “something changed,” for auditing, release tracking, or documentation monitoring. - You intend to integrate change detection into an existing automation stack (cron, CI/CD, status checks) and can manage scheduling and alerts yourself.