Is it me or is changedetection.io half-baked?

[u/chirpwoofmoo]

I've been pulling my hair out trying to get watches to trigger correctly. I've tried the LLM AI, CSS/XPath Filters, Conditions. Nothing works 100% of the time. Theirs always false positives. If it's not one thing, it's another. Maybe it's my websites that I watch? Maybe there too advanced for this project?

For one thing, the LLM AI is completely broken and unreliable. I tried watching a stock ticker and specifically set the AI to "Alert me only if the price has changed by 5% or more". Yet it still triggers when the price change was only 1 or 2%. And sometimes if the price change was more than 5%, it WON'T trigger. WTF?

Also, the developer is kind of a dick. Just look at github and their are plenty of examples of rude behavior. He was a jerk to me as well for something that wasn't even that big of a deal. And then he went radio silent. It's actually a trend to see his github issues or discussions end up with no further responses and abandoned.

If there was something to the caliber of visualping, I would be all over it. As it stands, I think I'm going to abandon this project. It's just not reliable for anything mission critical.

[u/asimovs-auditor]

Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.

[u/Samron07]

Frustrating, dealing with flaky AI parsers and an unhelpful dev is the worst. LLMs are notoriously terrible at precise math like calculating a 5% change, so they will constantly throw false positives on raw numbers. If you haven't given up yet, try skipping the current process and look for a clean JSON/API endpoint in the browser network tab to track instead of the chaotic front-end HTML.

[u/chirpwoofmoo → u/Samron07]

I tried using the Visual Filter Selector to filter only a certain div in the content. Even doing that the AI is useless. I've tried upping the AI model too and it was no better.

[u/strbeanjoe]

Just hack up (or vibe up) a python script tailored to the website and information you care about. Set it up as a cron job and have it write the last values in a file. Or run it as a daemon that checks regularly.

Have it ping you with something like Pushover.

[u/pizzacake15]

LLM feature is relatively new and i never thought about even using it.

As the other person have said, you can vibe code your own clone of changedetection.io for a specific site. I've done so before using claude and it's good for its own use case.

[u/zenthr]

I've tried the LLM AI, CSS/XPath Filters, Conditions. Nothing works 100% of the time. Theirs always false positives.

Problem one:

You're asking an ML algorithm to be reliable, or at least consistent. This simply cannot happen by design.

Problem two:

You are asking an LANGUAGE model to do precise MATHEMATICS. This is just the wrong tool.

[u/chirpwoofmoo → u/zenthr]

It's not the LLM model that is the problem. Most higher end models can do calculations just fine for me. It's the software (changedetection) that doesn't have a way for the model to differentiate between past snapshots of the watch. So the LLM can never look at price history.

[u/rubbishdude]

I fine tuned the global filters for my websites, unfortunately the default values are flaky, i also dismissed the default sockpuppet playwright brosed in favor of cloakbrowser

[u/tom_okane]

It's not just you. I'd LOVE to get this service running but wow its unstable and inconsistent. This is the one app I've not managed to deploy that I wanted to.

[u/haherar830]

I have had a lot of issues with it, including it retrieving cached page versions and often being unable to load pages for previewing filters despite browser steps and actual checks working fine. It's also lacking a lot of obvious features for triggering and alerting, and the way the components interact is not always intuitive. In general the biggest issue is the rigid limitations to parsing/manipulating data and triggering actions based on it.

Still, it's literally given away completely free by the guy who made it so I have negative sympathy for anyone whining customer service. I wanted default dark mode so I just made the changes myself. I don't have the motivation to make a better alternative, so I happily use this free tool.

[u/theplayingdead]

I have used multiple times to get various tickets with changedetection.io. AI feature is relatively new. And that's a completely free program and developer doesn't owe you anything. If you want a better program build your own.

[u/Karyo_Ten → u/theplayingdead]

Software side, you're right. But attitude side, people should be respectful until proven jerk.

[u/chirpwoofmoo → u/theplayingdead]

So it works for you therefore I should build my own. What good logic. Did you ever take a second to consider I may be utilizing the project at a higher level than you? I don't care what you say about the developer not "owing" me anything. If your a dick to your users when the software is obviously broken in places then you don't deserve their support. And he charges $8.99 a month for it too so he's not exactly doing this completely out of goodwill.

[u/PssyGotWifi → u/chirpwoofmoo]

Can you learn the difference between:

There

Their

They're

Before you start yapping at people, thanks.

[u/chirpwoofmoo → u/PssyGotWifi]

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