Content-launch radar with Slack MCP connector

This Actor is a personal content-launch radar. It watches the real submission window, article publication page, and project-status page in a writer's publishing workflow, then sends a Slack message only when a normalized deadline or status changes. It stores the last meaningful snapshot in a named key-value store, so a changed navigation bar or CSS class does not create an alert.

What it demonstrates

• an Apify input field that accepts a Slack MCP connector;
• a restricted slack_send_message tool allowlist;
• deterministic page-state extraction without an LLM;
• target purposes for submission, publication, and status pages;
• stateful transition classification (first_seen, deadline_moved, closing_soon, closed, and unchanged);
• a named key-value store so state survives separate scheduled runs;
• a dry-run mode for safe testing.

The Actor is intentionally small. It is not a general crawler, does not bypass access controls, and does not scrape authenticated pages. Before using a URL, check its robots.txt, terms, rate limits, and applicable law. Keep the page list small and run it on a reasonable schedule.

Local tests

python -m unittest discover -s tests -v

The unit tests cover extraction, cosmetic-change suppression, and transition deduplication. A live connector run must still be verified in an authenticated Apify account.

Apify input

{
  "pages": [
    {
      "label": "Apify Content Program submission window",
      "url": "https://apify.notion.site/apify-content-program",
      "purpose": "submission"
    },
    {
      "label": "Connector article project status",
      "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Abood991B/apify-content-program-actors/main/status/article-1.html",
      "purpose": "status"
    }
  ],
  "slack_connector": "<selected connector ID>",
  "slack_channel": "#content-radar",
  "state_store": "<selected named key-value store ID>",
  "lookahead_days": 7,
  "dry_run": false
}

Authorize Slack in Apify Console first. The Actor receives a connector identifier and uses the Apify MCP connector proxy; it never receives the third-party OAuth token.

The state store is deliberately a separate input. Apify's default key-value store belongs to one run; selecting a named store is what makes the comparison survive the next scheduled run.

Add a publication target only after the article has a real URL. examples/dry-run-input.json is a template for local engineering checks; examples/live-baseline-input.json records the real baseline used for the article.