When shipping and maintaining open-source projects, monitoring portfolio performance across the web is surprisingly fragmented.
Developers often manually check GitHub for stars and forks, browse Hacker News or Dev.to to see if recent posts received traction, and guess whether their project documentation has fallen out of sync with active codebase updates.
To solve this, I built Watchtower—an autonomous, open-source portfolio intelligence command center that monitors repository metrics, auto-discovers cross-platform mentions, predicts star milestone trajectories, and dispatches real-time telemetry alerts directly to mobile devices.
Key Architectural & Functional Highlights
1. Real-Time Mobile Telemetry (Telegram & Discord)
Watchtower monitors repository changes and cross-platform traction, sending structured notifications to your phone via Telegram Bot API and Discord Webhooks:
-
Star & Fork Alerts: Displays exact stargazer and fork growth alongside 14-day top traffic referrers (
+1 star (1 -> 2 total)). -
Reaction & Comment Alerts: Detects reader interactions on Dev.to and Hacker News posts with exact deltas (
+1 new comment (7 -> 8 total)). - Traffic Spike Alerts: Triggers instant momentum warnings when page views surge by +25 or Hacker News points increase by +5.
2. Cross-Platform Auto-Discovery Engine
Rather than requiring manual log entries for every blog post or forum launch, Watchtower automatically queries:
- Dev.to REST API: Inspects published article metadata and body markdown for embedded repository URLs, tracking page views, reactions, and comments.
- Hacker News Algolia API: Discovers Show HN submissions and discussion threads pointing to your GitHub repositories.
3. Predictive Star Milestone Velocity
Using a rolling 7-day historical log of individual repository star counts, Watchtower calculates daily star growth speed and projects the estimated days remaining to reach upcoming milestone thresholds (10, 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000 stars).
4. Automated README Staleness Detection
Documentation often lags behind active development. Watchtower queries commit histories to compare the last modification date of README.md against general repository push timestamps. If codebase updates are more than 30 days newer than the README, Watchtower flags the project with a staleness warning.
5. Actionable Weekly Recommendations
Watchtower evaluates conversion ratios (page views vs. star velocity), inactivity duration, and launch performance to generate rule-based weekly action items (e.g., "Receiving traffic but 0 stars — consider reviewing repository description and Topics to improve conversion").
Tech Stack & Security Model
- Frontend Command Center: React, Vite, Vanilla CSS, Recharts, Lucide Icons.
- Backend Automation: Node.js, Octokit REST API, Dev.to API, Algolia Search API.
- Notification Gateways: Telegram Bot API and Discord Webhooks.
- Security & Privacy: Zero API secrets bundled in the client build; all serverless interactions use authenticated proxy gateways.
Open Source & Community Feedback
Watchtower is completely open source and free to self-host on Vercel or schedule via GitHub Actions cron workflows.
If you find Watchtower useful or interesting, dropping a star on the GitHub repository means a lot and helps the project grow!
GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/shlokkokk/Watchtower
I would love to hear feedback and ideas from the developer community. What metrics or automated workflows do you currently use to manage your open-source portfolio?
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