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discatch for startups and founders

A startup can run its monitoring on free sources without paying. Free Hacker News alerts at one hour or slower, a daily unit allowance on free sources, and no credit card. When it grows, units cost fractions of a cent and the quote says the number before you spend. No $199 seat. No $10 per extra keyword. The anchor is Octolens Pro at $199 monthly ($159 annual) and Scale at $599 monthly ($499 annual), read from octolens.com/pricing on 2026-09-10. Starter at $19 and Pro at $49 should each feel like a fraction of the tier they replace. discatch is not an AI-visibility tool. It delivers mentions from public conversation to an agent or to an inbox. It does not tell you whether ChatGPT mentioned your brand.

Free to start
Free Hacker News alerts at one hour or slower, a daily unit allowance across free sources, and a small allowance on waterfall sources so you can see the difference. No credit card. Trial keys need no email. A startup can prove the product on its own brand at zero cost.
Competitor watch
One catch per competitor at a six-hour interval across web, news, and Hacker News. Once a day, read the event log since yesterday, classify the results, and write a digest of what people asked, complained about, and compared. The competitor-watch playbook does exactly this.
Launch day
Five-minute catches across every source for 48 hours around a launch. Route everything to a Slack channel and to a Claude Code command that files anything bug-shaped to GitHub. Catches that fire nothing cost nothing, and the quote says the total before you start. Delete both catches when the launch calms down.
Your agent drafts, you post
The reply-draft playbook gives your agent a voice file and a set of rules: answer the question first, mention the product once, never in the first sentence. Your agent drafts in your voice and leaves it where you review it. You post. discatch never posts on any platform on your behalf.
Forums nobody watches
Discourse forums are a first-class source. Watch any public Discourse forum by URL with a site: query and a catch at 15 minutes. The forum-triage playbook classifies threads into bug, question, feature request, or praise and files bugs to GitHub Issues with a link back to the thread. No other tool in the category gives Discourse forums a dedicated page with per-forum watching.
A price you can predict
Every call is quoted before it runs. The quote is a ceiling with locked unit prices; the charge is actual units at those prices and never exceeds the ceiling. Catches that fire nothing cost nothing. There is no per-keyword charge. Octolens charges $10 per extra keyword on Pro, read from octolens.com/pricing on 2026-09-10; discatch does not because it punishes curiosity. An agent can be told "you have $5 of discatch" and reason about it.

Playbooks for you

competitor-watch

Competitor watch
One catch per competitor at 6 hours. A daily job pulls the last 24 hours, classifies, and writes a digest of what people asked, complained about, and compared.
alertresultclassify

launch-day

Launch day
Sets up 5-minute catches across every source for a product name and URL 12 hours before a launch, and tears them down 48 hours after.
alertresult

reply-draft

Reply draft
Given a catch firing, your own agent drafts a reply in your voice and puts it where you can review and post it.
alertresult

Questions

Do I need to be technical?

The dashboard works without code, and every action in it shows the API call beside it so you learn the shape. Or tell your agent the domain name and the doctor manifest gets it the rest of the way. The CLI is npx discatch doctor to orient and npx discatch search to try a query.

Will discatch reply to people for me?

No. It catches and hands off. Your agent can draft in your voice using the reply-draft playbook, but you post. discatch never posts on any platform on your behalf. Reddit removed 40M or more spam posts in H1 2025 and banned automated reply tools. The risk falls on the account holder, and no monitoring tool should create that risk.

What about Reddit?

Indexed Reddit posts arrive as web results with a domain field today, which means Google-indexed Reddit threads show up with a reddit.com domain you can filter on. Direct Reddit coverage with full comment threads, and free Reddit alerts, are planned once a cleared path exists.

How much does it cost a startup?

Free on free sources with no credit card. A few searches a day on Hacker News and Discourse costs nothing. Starter at $19 a month adds catches at 15 minutes across all sources with a unit bundle. Past the bundle, units continue at per-unit rates. The quote says the exact cost before each call and the charge never exceeds it.

Can I watch my competitors too?

Yes. Register one catch per competitor name. The competitor-watch playbook sets them up at a 6-hour interval across web, news, and Hacker News. Once a day it pulls the event log, classifies the results, and writes a digest of questions, complaints, and comparisons. Catches are not priced per keyword, so adding another competitor costs only the units its firings consume.

What sources are in the first set?

Web, news, Hacker News, Discourse forums, Stack Overflow, and GitHub are the first set, roadmap phase 1b, which has not shipped yet; the doctor manifest’s sources_now list says what is live on any given day. Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, and Product Hunt are planned. Reddit, X, and LinkedIn are reserved until a cleared path exists. Indexed posts from those three networks arrive as web results with a domain field today.

Is there a free tier?

Yes. Free Hacker News alerts at one hour or slower, a daily unit allowance across free sources, and a small allowance on waterfall sources so you can see the difference. No credit card and trial keys need no email. Free Reddit alerts are planned once a cleared path exists.

How does discatch compare to Google Alerts?

Google Alerts is free and watches whatever Google indexes, delivered by email or RSS. It has no API and no webhooks. discatch adds a REST API, a signed webhook, forum and developer sources that Google indexes late or not at all (Discourse forums, Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow), a prescore on every result, and push to an agent. The free tier covers the same basic use case.

What is the cheapest way to start?

A trial key with no email and no card. POST /v1/keys/trial returns a key with a daily unit allowance on free sources. Free Hacker News alerts at one hour or slower are included. Claiming with an email raises the allowance and enables paid units. Starter at $19 a month adds catches at 15 minutes across all sources.

Does discatch have a dashboard?

Planned. The human dashboard is second priority after the API and the agent surface. It will show catches, results, deliveries, and usage. Every action in it will show the API call beside it so you learn the shape.

Last reviewed by , founder, dcouple. Copy from docs/vision.md, docs/onboarding.md, docs/playbooks.md.