Five rules and a five-check script for price alerts you can trust (free sample)
by PaperChaseWebb
From Deal Alert Worker: five rules for a price watch (owner-only alerts, a top total with delivery cost, two matching reads, quiet hours, no auto-buy), a spec template, and a read-only script that checks a spec for all five, with a worked example.
- Price
- Free
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- Setup
- 5 min
- Format
- .md file
deal-alert-worker-five-rules-and-checks-free-sample.md · 5 KB · direct download, no signup
What you end up with
In a minute you know whether a watch spec would spam you, wake you, fake a deal or buy on its own, and what to change.
What you get
- Five rules for price alerts
- A watch spec template
- deal_mini.py: five read-only checks
- One prompt for all four harnesses
- Worked example: 5 findings, then 0
Who it is for
Anyone about to set up a price alert, by hand or with an agent, who wants to check the setup before it runs.
Works with
Solid chips: the agent is named in this listing's own tools list. Dashed chip: Plain Markdown, so it also pastes into other agents such as Grok Bot, Hermes, OpenClaw or Muse. We list those as compatible by format only, not as tested.
Tools needed
Cost to run: Free.
Time to result: About five minutes to a first result
Sample prompt from the pack
Run python3 deal_mini.py deal.watch.json. Do not change anything. For each finding, say what would go wrong and the change that fixes it, then wait for me.
The rules and the script are in the file.
Free preview of the file
# Deal Alert Worker, free sample: a watch spec template, five rules and a five-check script
Version 1.0, 2026-10-28. By PaperChaseWebb. Works with Grok Bot, Claude Code, Codex and Hermes. Python 3 standard library. Tested on Linux with Python 3.13.5 as described below.
Most price alerts fail in the same ways: a price that was a parsing error, a low price eaten by delivery cost, the same alert every hour, alerts at 3 AM, and, with agent setups, a bot that could buy on its own. This sample gives you the habit that prevents most of that: write the watch down as a small spec and check it before anything runs it. Credit for the idea of one parser shared by a server engine and a browser engine, and for testing on saved real pages, goes to u/kotyzap's Deal Radar write-up: https://www.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/comments/1xe56y8/i_vibecoded_deal_radar_a_browser_extension/
## Five rules
1. Alerts go to the owner only. Not a group, not a team channel.
2. Watch the total, price plus delivery cost, and set a max_total. When delivery cost is unknown, assume a fair amount rather than zero.
3. Ask for two matching reads in a row before an alert. One bad parse is not a deal.
4. Set quiet hours in your own time zone. Deals found at night can wait for a morning batch.
5. Nothing buys on its own. The spec says purchase "owner_only" and has no checkout or auto-buy fields.
## A spec template
```json
{
"owner": "sam",
"timezone": "America/Chicago",
"quiet_hours": {"start": "22:00", "end": "07Worth knowing
- The sample checks a spec; it does not read any site or send alerts. The runner, Worker, extension, approvals, fifteen checks and eval set are in the full pack.
- On 2026-10-28 deal_mini.py gave 5 findings on the worked example, then 0 on the template, and exit 2 on a missing file. The prompt was not run inside a harness.
Questions
Does it send anything anywhere?
No. It reads one file and opens no network connection.
What is in the full pack?
A source spike prompt, a runner that reads JSON-LD, JSON and RSS on a timer within robots.txt, a Cloudflare Worker and a browser extension sharing one tested core, dedupe, quiet hours, a watch-broken alert, approvals tied to hashes, a buy-check, fifteen checks and a labeled eval set. $19.
Details
Version 1.0 · Updated Oct 28, 2026 · Markdown version of this page
License: Personal and commercial use. Download terms
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