Product Launch Monitor

Monitor Hacker News and public RSS/Atom launch feeds for new products, competitor launches, and keyword-triggered launch alerts.

This Actor is designed for scheduled market monitoring. It is not a generic HN or Product Hunt scraper: the main value is a compact change report that highlights new launch items worth acting on.

Input

• queries: Hacker News Algolia search queries.
• rssUrls: public RSS/Atom feeds. The default uses the HN RSS Show HN feed; add Product Hunt or other feeds only when appropriate for your use case.
• alertKeywords: product categories, competitor names, or buyer-problem terms that should trigger alerts.
• previousItemIds: optional IDs from a previous run.
• snapshotKey: key-value-store record used for scheduled change detection.
• minHnPoints: minimum HN score for a high-priority alert.

Output

Dataset rows include:

• source and source URL
• title, URL, published time, and score
• NEW or SEEN status
• alert flag, priority, matched keywords, and reasons

Key-value-store records:

• SUMMARY: machine-readable counts by source
• REPORT: Markdown digest for quick inspection

Monetization plan

First release should be free or usage-cost-only. If organic usage appears, clean paid units are:

• launch-alert: a new launch item matching configured keywords.
• high-signal-hn-launch: a new HN launch discussion above the point threshold.
• launch-digest-generated: a scheduled digest containing at least one new alert.

Do not charge for unchanged SEEN rows or empty reports.

See MONETIZATION_READINESS.md for the current market-gap positioning and release gate. The short version: this is a second-batch product with a better less-crowded gap score than raw app-review scraping, but it should still wait behind the current App Review approval gate unless explicitly reprioritized.

Source notes

The default configuration avoids API-token setup and browser automation. Product Hunt's official API requires an access token and has commercial-use constraints, so this Actor does not depend on that API by default. Users can still provide public feeds they are allowed to monitor.

Local validation

npm test
npm run sample
npx apify-cli validate-schema
npm pack --dry-run --json

Guarded remote test

Remote testing requires explicit approval and a fresh local preflight:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\apify-run-approved-remote-test.ps1 -Actor product-launch -Apply -ConfirmText 'APPROVE guarded product-launch remote private test <= $0.02'