Getting started
Watcher is self-hosted: there is no account to sign up for. You run it, and it watches things for you. That makes getting started a deployment task, so this section walks it in stages.
1. Quickstart (local)Clone, configure two secrets, run one watch by hand. About 15 minutes.
2. Deploy it for realPut it on a schedule so it keeps watching when your laptop is closed.
3. Create your first watchWrite a condition, pick sources, choose a confidence bar.
4. Get the alertsTelegram, or push notifications on Android.
What you will need
Section titled “What you will need”| Thing | Why | Cost |
|---|---|---|
Node.js 20 or newer, and pnpm |
Runs the code | free |
| A MongoDB database | Stores watches, run state and history | free tier is enough |
| A Google AI Studio API key | The model that judges your condition | free tier is enough |
| A Telegram bot (optional) | Where alerts arrive | free |
| A Tavily API key (optional) | Needed only for search sources |
free tier is enough |
Everything else — web search, page extraction tiers, a second-opinion model, push notifications — is optional and degrades gracefully when it is not configured.