Open Scouts is an AI-powered web monitoring platform enabling users to create automated "scouts" that continuously search the web for specific information. It targets users needing to track updates, news, or any dynamic web content, providing timely email alerts when new information is discovered, thereby automating tedious manual monitoring tasks.

How It Works

The platform leverages a robust tech stack including Next.js, Supabase (PostgreSQL, Auth, Edge Functions), OpenAI for AI agents and embeddings, Firecrawl for web scraping, and Resend for email notifications. Its core is a scalable dispatcher architecture utilizing PostgreSQL's pg_cron and pg_net to trigger isolated Supabase Edge Functions for scout execution, with AI generating concise, semantically searchable summaries of findings. A key differentiator is the optional Firecrawl partner integration for per-user API key management in production environments.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Prerequisites: Node.js 18+, bun/npm/pnpm, Supabase account, OpenAI API key, Firecrawl API key, Resend API key.
• Installation: Clone the repository, install dependencies (bun install), link Supabase CLI (bunx supabase link), run database setup (bun run setup:db), deploy Edge Functions (bunx supabase functions deploy ...), and configure environment variables (.env).
• Running: bun run dev starts the development server.
• Docs: Supabase, OpenAI, Firecrawl, Resend.

Highlighted Details

• Scalable dispatcher architecture orchestrates scout executions via pg_cron and pg_net.
• AI-generated one-sentence summaries with vector embeddings for each successful scout execution.
• Optional Firecrawl partner integration allows per-user API key management for production deployments.
• Robust security with Supabase Row Level Security (RLS) ensuring user data isolation.

Maintenance & Community

Contributions are welcomed via Pull Requests. No specific community channels or notable maintainer information is provided in the README.

Licensing & Compatibility

The project is released under the MIT License, which permits commercial use and integration into closed-source projects.

Limitations & Caveats

The Resend free tier imposes limitations on email sending volume and requires domain verification for sending to arbitrary email addresses. Setup requires obtaining and configuring multiple third-party API keys.