Buying-Intent Monitor: Hacker News + Bluesky Alerts

Find people who are asking for a product like yours, while they're still asking.

This Actor watches Hacker News and Bluesky for the phrases buyers actually write ("alternative to Notion", "looking for a CRM", "is there a tool that…"), plus your brand and competitors' names. Every run returns only posts you haven't seen before, and it can send them straight to Slack or any webhook.

Set it up once, schedule it hourly or daily, and get a steady feed of warm leads and brand mentions.

Why use it

• 🎯 Exact-phrase matching. Search engines are fuzzy, so every result is double-checked to contain your phrase. You get no noise from loose keyword matches.
• 🔁 Only new matches. Each monitor remembers what it already reported, so scheduled runs never repeat a post.
• 🔔 Instant alerts. Matches go to Slack, or to a webhook for Zapier, Make, n8n or your own app.
• 🧾 Pay only for what works. Failed checks are never charged, and a spending limit stops the run cleanly.
• 🔓 Reliable by design. It uses Hacker News's and Bluesky's open public APIs: no logins, cookies or proxies to break.

Use cases

• Lead generation for SaaS founders: "looking for a [your category]", "recommend a [tool]", "[competitor] alternative".
• Competitor tracking: see who complains about or switches away from a competitor ("switching from X", "X is too expensive").
• Brand monitoring: catch every mention of your product or company name.
• Market research: follow how people talk about a problem before you build for it.

How to use it

1. Enter your keywords, one phrase per line.
2. Give the monitor a Monitor ID (e.g. my-saas). Runs with the same ID share memory.
3. Optionally add a Slack incoming-webhook URL or a webhook URL.
4. Click Start to try it, then go to Schedules and run it hourly or daily.

The first run looks back lookbackHours (default 24). After that, each run picks up where the last one stopped.

Input example

{
  "monitorId": "my-saas",
  "keywords": ["alternative to notion", "looking for a crm", "acme crm"],
  "sources": ["hackernews", "bluesky"],
  "includeComments": true,
  "slackWebhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/..."
}

Field	What it's for
keywords	Phrases to look for, matched case-insensitively.
monitorId	Name of this monitor. Runs with the same ID share memory.
sources	hackernews, bluesky, or both.
includeComments	Also match HN comments and Bluesky replies.
lookbackHours	How far back the very first run looks (default 24, max 720).
maxMatchesPerRun	Upper limit on matches per run (default 200). Extra matches carry over to the next run.
webhookUrl / slackWebhookUrl	Where to send new matches.

Output example

Each dataset item is one new match:

{
  "id": "hackernews:45678901",
  "source": "hackernews",
  "type": "comment",
  "keyword": "looking for a crm",
  "title": "Comment on: Ask HN: What CRM do small teams use?",
  "text": "We're a 5-person agency looking for a CRM that isn't Salesforce...",
  "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45678901",
  "author": "someuser",
  "community": "Ask HN: What CRM do small teams use?",
  "createdAt": "2026-10-31T09:12:44.000Z",
  "matchedAt": "2026-10-31T10:00:03.112Z"
}

Export it as JSON, CSV or Excel, or pull it through the Apify API.

The webhook receives { "monitorId": "...", "count": 3, "matches": [ ... ] } whenever a run finds something new.

Pricing

You pay per event:

• Keyword check: one keyword searched on one source. It's charged only when the search succeeds.
• Match: one new, de-duplicated post stored.

For example, 5 keywords on both sources, checked hourly, is 240 checks a day. Matches depend on how popular your phrases are.

Tips

• Phrase keywords the way people looking to buy write: "recommend a", "is there a tool", "switching from X", "X alternative", "X vs".
• Use one Monitor ID per product or client, so their memories stay separate.
• Each Bluesky check sees at most the 100 newest posts since the last run. For very common phrases, schedule hourly; the run log warns if a check hit that limit.

FAQ

Does it need my Hacker News or Bluesky login? No. It only reads public posts through each network's public API.

Will I get the same post twice? No, as long as you keep the same Monitor ID. Use a new ID to start fresh.

Can I add Reddit or X? Not currently. Reddit's API terms restrict commercial use, so this Actor sticks to open networks.

Something's missing or broken? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab and it'll be looked at quickly.