CompetitorPulse

Competitive-intel change-digest agent + MCP server.

Watch competitor websites, changelogs, blog feeds (RSS/Atom), and pricing pages.

Fetches politely, meaningful diffs, classifies pricing/feature/blog/other, Markdown digests. CLI and MCP server. Self-host free MIT; hosted Pro later.

Value proposition

Blocked by design: LinkedIn URLs (ToS / politeness).

Related MCP server: Competitor Website Change Monitor

Quickstart

Install deps, copy the example YAML to competitors.yaml, then run tests, typecheck, list, check, and digest via package scripts.

Example: use package scripts install, test, check, cli, mcp, and build.

CLI

• list / add / remove competitors

• check (fetch, diff, classify, write digests)

• digest (print latest)

• changes (recent records)

Env: COMPETITORPULSE_CONFIG, COMPETITORPULSE_DATA, OPENAI_API_KEY, OPENAI_MODEL.

MCP server

Stdio tools: list_competitors, add_competitor, remove_competitor, run_check, get_digest, get_changes.

Start via package script mcp (tsx on src/mcp-server.ts). Configure Cursor mcp.json with cwd plus config/data env paths. After tsc build, run node on dist/mcp-server.js.

Two-pass semantic verify

Line diffs still fire on date footers, view counters, and CDN asset hashes. After meaningfulDiff, CompetitorPulse runs a second pass that:

• Normalizes dates / counters / hashed asset URLs

• Detects pure sentence reorders

• Attaches structured signals (price_change, feature_mention, …)

• Adds a one-line what it means interpretation (no LLM required)

Cosmetic churn is dropped before classify/store/digest — fewer Visualping-style false positives.

Per-source selectors and ignore patterns

Cut noise at the source, before the diff runs. Any source can use an object instead of a URL. The plain string form still works.

competitors:
  - id: acme
    name: Acme
    sources:
      website: "https://acme.example"              # plain form, unchanged
      pricing:
        url: "https://acme.example/pricing"
        include: [".pricing-table", "#faq"]        # keep only these elements
        exclude: [".testimonials", ".cookie-banner"]  # drop these first
        ignore: ["^Last updated", "\\d[\\d,]* customers$"]  # drop matching lines

• include / exclude are CSS selectors (cheerio, which is already a dependency) and apply to HTML sources. If include matches nothing, that source reports an error and keeps its last snapshot, so a changed layout can't show up as "everything was removed".

• ignore is a list of regexes matched per line. They are case-insensitive; write /re/flags to set flags yourself. They apply to HTML and RSS/Atom text.

• Bad selectors or patterns fail at config load.

• Changing a source's filters re-baselines it ("Filters changed; new baseline captured") instead of producing one giant diff.

• saveConfig (CLI/MCP add / remove) keeps the object form.

• This runs before the two-pass verify, which still drops date, counter and reorder churn.

Architecture

YAML -> CLI/MCP -> check orchestrator -> fetch -> normalize -> meaningful diff -> classify -> store -> Markdown digest (optional LLM summary) -> data/digests/

Modules: config, fetch, diff, classify, store, digest, summarize, check, cli, mcp-server, index.

Example config

See examples/competitors.example.yaml (northstar-analytics, riverbed-crm, lighthouse-docs).

Monetization

Self-host free MIT now. Hosted Pro later (schedules, teams, Slack/email). Distribution via Gumroad, Apify, MCP marketplaces.

Development

Run install, test, check, and build via package scripts. Tests cover diff, classify, URL policy, semantic verify, and per-source filters.

Limitations (MVP)

Main-content HTML heuristics (or per-source CSS selectors) only (no headless browser). First fetch is baseline. Rule-based classify; LLM summary only with API key. No built-in cron. Polite delay 750ms and identifiable User-Agent; respect site policies.

License

MIT (c) 2026 Vinay Vik — see LICENSE.