🚀 Smart Website Change Detection Monitor (Pay Only for Real Changes)

Monitor websites for availability and meaningful updates — and only pay when something actually changes.

This Actor is built for reliable, long-term monitoring, not aggressive scraping. It detects page changes using stable signals (HTTP status + page title) and delivers consistent, production-ready output.

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💡 Why This Actor?

Most monitoring tools charge per run or per request.

❌ You pay even when nothing changes
❌ You waste credits on unchanged results

👉 This Actor is different.

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💸 Smart Charging Model

✔ New page detected → Charged
✔ Page changed → Charged
❌ No change → FREE
❌ Blocked / error → FREE

You only pay when real, meaningful updates happen.

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🎯 Core Features

🔍 Change Detection

• Detects new and updated pages
• Tracks title changes and HTTP status

⚡ Lightweight & Efficient

• Minimal resource usage
• Fast execution for scheduled monitoring

🛡️ Reliable Monitoring Design

• Retry logic for unstable pages
• Handles blocked or error responses gracefully

📊 Clean Structured Output

• API-ready JSON format
• Consistent fields across runs

🔁 Built for Scheduling

• Run hourly, daily, or weekly
• Ideal for automation pipelines

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💼 Real Use Cases

🧑‍💼 Job & Hiring Monitoring

Track updates on career pages and job boards:

• New job postings
• Hiring status changes

💰 Pricing & Product Monitoring

Monitor pricing pages and product listings:

• Price changes
• Offer updates
• Product availability

🧠 Competitor Intelligence

Track competitor websites and announcements:

• New features
• Landing page updates
• Marketing changes

📊 Operations & Compliance

Monitor policy or regulatory pages:

• Legal updates
• Compliance changes
• Public announcements

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📥 Input

Provide URLs to monitor:

https://boards.greenhouse.io/stripe/jobs https://jobs.lever.co/openai https://www.shopify.com/pricing

Optional settings:

• max_pages – limit number of pages per run
• monitor_mode – enable monitoring-focused execution

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📤 Output (Value Events Only)

This Actor only pushes results when meaningful changes are detected.

{
  "url": "https://www.shopify.com/pricing",
  "status": "accessible",
  "http_status": "200",
  "title": "Shopify Pricing - Updated",
  "change_type": "changed",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-26T13:32:37.798008"
}


🧾 Change Types
| Type      | Description          | Charged |
| --------- | -------------------- | ------- |
| new       | First time seen      | ✅ Yes   |
| changed   | Page content changed | ✅ Yes   |
| unchanged | No changes detected  | ❌ No    |
| error     | Page failed to load  | ❌ No    |
| blocked   | Access restricted    | ❌ No    |



🔁 Monitoring Workflow
1. Provide URLs
2. Run Actor on schedule
3. Actor compares current vs previous state
4. Only pushes results when changes are detected

👉 Efficient, cost-controlled monitoring.


⚙️ Internal Behavior
- Stores previous page state (fingerprint)
- Compares current vs last run
- Uses retry logic for stability
- Saves full results internally (no charge)


💬 Positioning

This is not a scraper.

👉 It is a reliable monitoring system designed for:

- Long-term tracking
- Cost efficiency
- Real-world automation workflows


🔒 Compliance & Safety
- Public pages only
- No login or private data access
- Respectful request patterns
- Designed for stability, not aggressive scraping


📈 Summary

✔ Pay only when changes happen
✔ Reduce wasted runs and costs
✔ Build reliable monitoring workflows


👨‍💻 Built by

Leoncio Coronado Jr.
Data Automation & Web Scraping Engineer