# Build brief — a focused alternative to Better Stack / UptimeRobot paid

> **Verdict:** Yes, for personal use · **Buildability:** 76/100 · **Category:** Uptime
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/uptime
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Better Stack / UptimeRobot paid. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**Better Stack / UptimeRobot paid** — A cron loop, a fetch, an alert webhook, and a status page. It currently costs $30/mo.

A cron loop, a fetch, an alert webhook, and a status page. The $30/mo is for the dashboard gloss.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Better Stack / UptimeRobot paid 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

A focused, single-user version of Better Stack / UptimeRobot paid's main workflow.

- Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### 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 me an uptime monitor like UptimeRobot. Requirements:

- A config file (monitors.json) listing URLs with: name, interval seconds,
  timeout, expected status code, and an optional keyword the body must contain.
- A single long-running Node or Python process that checks each monitor on its
  interval, records results (SQLite: timestamp, status, latency ms), and tracks
  state transitions.
- On DOWN or RECOVERED transitions (after 2 consecutive fails to avoid flaps):
  send a webhook (Discord/Slack/Telegram format, URL from .env) with the monitor
  name, error, and duration of the outage.
- A public /status page: green/red per monitor, uptime % over 24h/7d/30d, and a
  latency sparkline drawn as inline SVG. Auto-refresh every 30s.
- Keep 90 days of history, prune older rows daily.
- One process, no queue, no Docker required; systemd unit file included.

## 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:

- Global multi-region probes.
- On-call scheduling & escalation policies.
- Incident timelines and postmortem tooling.
- Phone-call alerts.
- Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.
- The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.

## What you still own after launch

- 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.

## Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: high. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

## Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

- [Uptime Kuma](https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma) — beloved self-hosted uptime monitor

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