Watch for a change you care about
Build a background monitor that follows chosen sources and tells the person when something relevant changes. Build it extremely well for a question they currently keep checking themselves. Follow the shared launch.
Start with a concrete interest: the announcement of a beginner pottery class, a changed community schedule, an item a collector is looking for, or a document that gets revised. Learn what would make the person act and how quickly they need to know.
Define the useful change
Choose the actual sources and identify the information that matters. A new course with open registration is different from an updated footer or a rearranged page. Use the source's available feeds, interfaces, or other suitable access to follow the relevant material.
Give the monitor a clear condition to watch for, based on the person's interest. Keep the condition understandable and editable. Let the initial check establish what is already present so later findings can be recognized as new or changed.
Preserve useful details such as the event date, registration state, or revised entry, together with the original source. A notification should give the person enough information to decide whether to open it.
Keep track between checks
Remember what was observed and already reported. Show the date of the last successful check and the source of the current information. Repeated checks of the same material should leave the person with a clear account of what has actually changed.
Distinguish an unchanged source from a failed check. Retain the last useful result with its date when access fails, and make the problem visible through the monitor's status. Resume normal checking when the source is available again.
Choose a cadence that fits the source and the person's need to act. Explain where the monitor runs and what happens while its computer or service is unavailable. Use suitable existing infrastructure and make any external service requirements or costs clear.
Tell the person something useful
Deliver notifications through a method the person chooses and can actually receive. Give each notification a concise explanation of what changed, the relevant details, and a link back to the source. Keep the notification history available to inspect.
Let the person adjust the condition, pause a source, check now, or stop receiving notifications. If the monitor produces irrelevant findings, use those examples to refine what triggers a notification.
Make “nothing new” an ordinary successful check. Keep routine operation visible when inspected, and reserve attention-seeking notifications for the findings or problems the person wants to hear about.
See a change get noticed
Deliver the working monitor and notification route. Establish a starting observation, then use a representative new or revised item to exercise detection and delivery. Check a repeated observation and an unavailable source as well. Judge whether the resulting message would have saved the person a manual visit.
Keep the monitor's setup, observations, and useful history under the shared launch's ownership and recovery arrangements. Leave the person able to explain what it watches and to change that purpose with you.
Use the experience to teach the difference between a page changing and something important happening. Later, a suitable AI connection can judge more nuanced relevance, with the original material retained for inspection and the person's interests preserved between runs.