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Show HN: I built a tool that watches webpages and exposes changes as RSS

sitespy.app

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Show HN: I built a tool that watches webpages and exposes changes as RSS

#1
I built Site Spy after missing a visa appointment slot because a government page changed and I didn’t notice for two weeks.

It watches webpages for changes and shows the result like a diff. The part I think HN might find interesting is that it can monitor a specific element on a page, not just the whole page, and it can expose changes as RSS feeds.

So instead of tracking an entire noisy page, you can watch just a price, a stock status, a headline, or a specific content block. When it changes, you can inspect the diff, browse the snapshot history, or follow the updates in an RSS reader.

It’s a Chrome/Firefox extension plus a web dashboard.

Main features:

- Element picker for tracking a specific part of a page

- Diff view plus full snapshot timeline

- RSS feeds per watch, per tag, or across all watches

- MCP server for Claude, Cursor, and other AI agents

- Browser push, Email, and Telegram notifications

Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/site-spy/jeapcpanag...

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/site-spy/

Docs: https://docs.sitespy.app

I’d especially love feedback on two things:

- Is RSS actually a useful interface for this, or do most people just want direct alerts?

- Does element-level tracking feel meaningfully better than full-page monitoring?

Show HN: I built a tool that watches webpages and exposes changes as RSS
sitespy.app

Re: Show HN: I built a tool that watches webpages and exposes changes as RSS

#8
post #4

Quick feedback: 1. RSS is just fine for updates. Given the importance of your visa use-case, were you thinking of push notifications? 2. Your competition does element-level tracking. Maybe they choose XPath?

Yep, Site Spy already has push notifications, plus email and Telegram alerts. I see RSS as the open interface for people who want to plug updates into their own reader or workflow. For urgent things like visa slots or stock availability, direct alerts are definitely the main path.

And yeah, element-level tracking isn't a brand new idea by itself. The thing I wanted to improve was making it easy to pick the exact part of a page you care about and then inspect the change via diffs, history, or RSS instead of just getting a generic "page changed" notification

Re: Show HN: I built a tool that watches webpages and exposes changes as RSS

#9
post #5

I like https://github.com/dgtlmoon/changedetection.io for this. Open source and free to run locally or use their Saas service.

Yep, changedetection.io is a good project. With Site Spy, I wanted to make the browser-first workflow much easier: install the extension, connect it to the dashboard, click the exact part of the page you care about, and then follow changes as diffs, history, or RSS with very little setup. I can definitely see why the open-source / self-hosted route is appealing too.
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