Watches

Save a search once — “new running shoes under £100”, or just “anything new here” — and hear only when a record matches that you have not been told about.

• Never sends the same result twice. An unchanged list sends nothing; a list that gains one record sends one alert.
• Belongs to one list and searches only that list.
• Found on a list under the bell (Watches) icon in its header.

New or changed

A record alerts you when it is new to the watch, and again whenever its content changes — a price drop, stock coming or going, a rewritten description.

• Content means the record’s name and fields.
• Not the time it was last saved — re-importing the same data sends no alerts.
• Not the relevance score, which moves with the search rather than the record.

Why a watch pins a version

A watch pins one version of its list, as an eval set does.

• A version fixes the list’s fields — the facets and searchable fields your search and filter name — so a later rename or drop cannot change what your filter means.
• Records are never versioned. A new record shows up in every version the moment it lands, so a watch on an older version still sees everything new.

Create a watch

Press Create watch on the list’s Watches page. Only a name is required; the list version, filter, check every and max alerts per check sit under Advanced, already defaulted. The watch starts on the next check run.

Checking alerts with a judge

Each new or changed record goes to the chosen model before it counts as an alert. A judge can decide “only if the item is under £100 and in my size”; a search cannot.

• No judge to set up first: the watch writes its own instructions, billed to that key. A watch created through the API can name instructions you wrote; the console shows them and leaves them alone.
• Only new or changed records are judged, so an unchanging list costs nothing however often it checks. A record ruled out is remembered as ruled out and is not judged — or billed — again.
• No decision on a record (your provider had a bad minute) — the record is still sent, marked needs review.
• Judge cannot run at all (rejected key, or a model that key may not use) — the check is skipped and nothing is marked as seen, so those records alert properly once you fix it. The check tells you which of the two happened.
• Providers grant models per project and plan, so a documented model is not always one your key can call. The judge’s health indicator reads your key’s own model list and turns red on a model it cannot use. Fix it with another model, or a key with access.

Getting alerts

Every alert is recorded in the watch’s Alerts feed (its … menu → Alerts), newest first, whether or not anything is emailed.

• Each is stamped with the version of the list searched and the revision of the watch that found it, so an old alert still says which records were included and which question was asked.
• Outside the console: email for a person, webhooks for a machine — independent of each other.

By email

• One email per check that found something, listing everything — fifty things is one email, not fifty. A check that finds nothing sends nothing.
• Everyone listed gets their own copy, so each can unsubscribe alone and nobody sees another’s address.
• Up to ten addresses per watch. Need more? A group address counts as one.
• Every email carries a stop emailing me link, personal to its recipient: it removes only that address, and the watch and its webhooks keep running. Add the address back by editing the watch.

By webhook

Send alerts to a webhook by subscribing to either event, or both:

The message carries the record’s id, not its fields: the record is live, so fetch it by id.

Is it telling you useful things?

Every alert has a thumbs-up and a thumbs-down, building the watch’s precision: of the alerts you rated, the share you actually wanted.

• Measured, never learned from — nothing re-ranks, re-tunes or filters on your ratings. Low precision means the watch is asking the wrong question — edit the search, or tighten what you asked the judge for.
• Rating the same record twice replaces the earlier rating: one rating per record.
• Sent to your telemetry destination as searchstack.watch.precision, alongside searchstack.watch.matches, searchstack.watch.judge.filtered and searchstack.watch.sweep.duration.

Editing and pausing

• Edit is a full replace, not a partial update. It moves the watch to its next revision, so alerts either side of an edit can be told apart, and never re-alerts records already reported.
• Move to a newer list version by changing the pinned version in an edit. Leave the version out and the current pin is kept.
• A different list is not possible — that would lose the watch’s memory. Delete the watch and create another.
• Pause stops the checks and keeps the watch and its history. A paused watch is never checked.

Checking now

A watch’s … menu → Check now runs the check immediately.

• The same check, not a preview: it really searches, judges, records alerts and sends the emails and webhooks. There is no test run — pause a watch you are still deciding about.
• Refused on a paused watch. Resume it first.
• Records already alerted are not sent again; a check over an unchanged list costs one search and no judging.
• Runs in the background. The row says Checking now… and updates Last checked when the result lands, usually within seconds.
• Resets the timer for the next scheduled check — a daily watch checked at noon next runs at noon tomorrow.

Limits

A check uses one search from your plan’s search allowance. 25 watches checking every 15 minutes is 100 searches an hour.

Deleting

Deleting a watch removes its alert history and your ratings. Your records are untouched — a watch only ever reads. Deleting the list deletes its watches.

What a watch is not

• Not a live trigger. Checks are minutes apart, not milliseconds.
• Not a copy of your data. It stores what it alerted you about, never what your records said.
• Not a learning system. Nothing acts on your ratings but you.