# Build brief — a focused alternative to SnitchFeed > **Verdict:** Not faithfully · **Buildability:** 19/100 · **Category:** Social Media > **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/snitchfeed > Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from SnitchFeed. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting. ## Context **SnitchFeed** — Find buyers at peak intent: 24/7 monitoring of Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Hacker News, AI-scored and delivered to your team or your agents in real time. It currently costs $59/mo. A focused build gets you a keyword matcher; SnitchFeed is a signal refinery. Five platforms in one stream (Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Hacker News), run through layered filtering: boolean queries, AI scoring for relevance, sentiment, and buying intent, and noise auditing that keeps trimming. What comes out is a shortlist of threads worth answering, delivered where you act: Slack, Discord, a live dashboard, or your own AI agent via MCP and REST API. To be fair: if you only care about Reddit and Hacker News, a DIY build gets you further than the verdict suggests. It's the X and LinkedIn coverage, the cross-platform aggregation, and the tuned scoring that a one-shot build can't reach. This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of SnitchFeed that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest. ## What you are building Poll a couple of free, open feeds (Reddit's API, Bluesky's firehose, Hacker News's Algolia API) for keyword matches, run each hit through an LLM for a rough relevance/sentiment tag, and push matches to a Slack or Discord webhook. - Draft, queue, and track content for the few networks you actually use. - A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states. ## Requirements ### Functional - Bluesky app password for firehose/search access. - Hosted Postgres + a cron worker or queue. ### Data and integrations - Reddit API app credentials (free). - Hacker News Algolia API (no key required). - OpenAI/Anthropic API key for relevance & sentiment tagging. - Slack/Discord incoming webhook URL(s). Each of these needs a real account, credential, or quota. Set them up before writing feature code. ### Non-functional - Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support. - Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle. - Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down. - Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it. ## Implementation brief Build a personal social-listening tool inspired by SnitchFeed, starting from an empty folder. This is an honest consolation build: it watches free, open feeds only and does not replace SnitchFeed's aggregation, tuned scoring, or automation layer. Stack (use exactly this): Next.js 15 + TypeScript + PostgreSQL + BullMQ + Redis. Core loop: - Let me define keywords/brand terms and a poll interval per source. - Poll Reddit's API, Bluesky's search, and Hacker News's Algolia API via a BullMQ worker on a cron schedule; dedupe matches by source + id. - Score each match's relevance and sentiment with one LLM call (OpenAI or Anthropic); store both alongside the raw post. - Push new matches to a Slack or Discord incoming webhook. - Smallest polished UI that closes the loop: add a keyword, watch matches stream in, mark them read or irrelevant. Rules: - Single-user and private by default; all data in local Postgres. - Every API key, app password, and webhook URL in .env, with .env.example provided; never log secrets; validate untrusted input. - No analytics, telemetry, ads, or accounts beyond what's declared. - Clear empty, loading, validation, success, and failure states. Deliberately out of scope (do not fake these): X/Twitter and LinkedIn coverage, cross-platform aggregation and dedup at scale, continuously tuned relevance scoring and noise auditing, a live real-time dashboard, and any agent-facing API/MCP layer. Finish line: - Unit tests for the dedupe logic and the scoring call, plus one end-to-end smoke test: keyword added, fake match flows through to a webhook call. - README covering setup, the exact free APIs used and their rate limits, and this build's limitations versus a paid multi-source listening tool. - Scripts for install, development, test, build, and a production-style local run. - Run the tests and the build before finishing; fix errors rather than describing them. ## Delivery standard - Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code. - Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data. - Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations. - Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states. - Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data. - Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details. - Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey. - Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations. ## Acceptance criteria - [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example. - [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable. - [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state. - [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control. - [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures. - [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified. ## Non-goals Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them: - X/Twitter and LinkedIn coverage entirely (neither has a free public search API), so two of the five platforms are simply gone. - One aggregated, deduplicated stream across five platforms instead of five half-working pollers. - The noise-reduction stack: boolean query grammar, AI fit scores, sentiment, intent tags, and automated noise auditing that keeps tuning what gets through. - A real-time dashboard with curated feeds, saved views, and analytics reports instead of a Slack ping you learn to ignore. - An agent-native surface: an MCP server and public REST API so your own AI agents can search mentions, create listeners, and act on intent directly. ## What you still own after launch - Secure credentials, rotate secrets, and handle provider rate limits. - Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates. - Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change. - Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss. - Maintain every third-party integration as APIs and OAuth rules change. ## Risk **Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost. Editorial confidence in this assessment: medium. No reviewed project implementation is linked yet. ## Existing alternatives Before building, compare these checked options: - [F5Bot](https://f5bot.com) — Emails you when a keyword shows up on Reddit, Hacker News or Lobsters. No scoring, no dashboard, no X or LinkedIn · free and it never sleeps ## Prior art Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting: - [Huginn](https://github.com/huginn/huginn) — Self-hosted agent system for watching sites/feeds and triggering actions on events --- Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/snitchfeed