Site Change Alert

Website change detection and monitoring toolkit. Track content changes, log alerts, compare snapshots, and generate reports — all from the command line.

Commands

Run site-change-alert <command> [args] to use.

Each data command (run, check, convert, analyze, generate, preview, batch, compare, export, config, status, report) works in two modes:

• Without arguments — displays the 20 most recent entries from its log
• With arguments — saves the input with a timestamp to its dedicated log file

Data Storage

All data is stored in ~/.local/share/site-change-alert/:

• run.log, check.log, convert.log, analyze.log, generate.log, preview.log — per-command log files
• batch.log, compare.log, export.log, config.log, status.log, report.log — additional command logs
• history.log — unified activity history across all commands
• export.json, export.csv, export.txt — generated export files

Set SITE_CHANGE_ALERT_DIR environment variable to override the default data directory.

Requirements

• Bash 4+ with standard coreutils (date, wc, du, tail, grep, sed)
• No external dependencies — pure shell implementation

When to Use

1. Monitoring website content — track when a page's text, price, or stock status changes
2. Logging change detection results — keep a timestamped history of checks and their outcomes
3. Batch URL monitoring — process multiple targets in one run for efficiency
4. Comparing snapshots — compare before/after states of web content
5. Generating change reports — produce reports summarizing detected changes over time

Examples

# Run a change detection check on a URL
site-change-alert run "https://example.com/products checked - no change"

# Check and log a specific target
site-change-alert check "https://shop.example.com/item-42 price=$19.99"

# Batch process multiple URLs
site-change-alert batch "group=electronics urls=15 changes_found=3"

# Compare two snapshots
site-change-alert compare "page_v1 vs page_v2: 12 differences found"

# Export all data as CSV
site-change-alert export csv

# Search for entries mentioning a domain
site-change-alert search "example.com"

# View recent activity across all commands
site-change-alert recent

# Show statistics
site-change-alert stats

Output

All commands output results to stdout. Log entries are stored with timestamps in pipe-delimited format (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM|value). Use export to convert all data to JSON, CSV, or plain text.

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