crawlforge-change-tracking

CrawlForge Change Tracking

Detect when a web page changes over time using the track_changes tool. Useful for competitor pricing, regulation updates, product availability, and any page you need to watch for edits.

When to use

• "Track changes to this page" / "watch this URL"
• "Tell me when competitor pricing changes"
• "Detect when this content updates"
• "Diff this page against last week's version"
• "Notify me when product availability / a regulation changes"

Core workflow

track_changes is one tool driven by an operation parameter (cost: 3 credits per call).

1. Create a baseline the first time:

{ "tool": "track_changes", "params": { "url": "https://example.com/pricing", "operation": "create_baseline" } }

1. Compare later to get the change percentage + diff:

{ "tool": "track_changes", "params": { "url": "https://example.com/pricing", "operation": "compare" } }

compare is the default operation. It returns a change percentage and a structured diff against the stored baseline.

Scoping to part of a page

Use trackingOptions to ignore noise and focus on what matters:

{
  "tool": "track_changes",
  "params": {
    "url": "https://example.com/pricing",
    "operation": "create_baseline",
    "trackingOptions": {
      "granularity": "element",
      "customSelectors": [".price", ".plan-name"],
      "excludeSelectors": [".timestamp", ".ad"],
      "ignoreWhitespace": true
    }
  }
}

granularity: page, section (default), element, text. Toggle trackText, trackStructure, trackLinks, trackImages. Set significanceThresholds (minor/moderate/major) to classify change size.

granularity, customSelectors and excludeSelectors are fixed when the baseline is created: every compare diffs with the baseline's values, so pass them on create_baseline. A compare that asks for different values still runs at the baseline's, and its result carries ignoredOptions: [{option, requested, applied}] plus a warnings entry. To change them, create a new baseline.