AutomationSTATUS: Open Source 1 0

RivalTrace Competitor Monitor

Automated competitor tracking engine with DOM diff analysis and strategic briefings

RivalTrace continuously inspects competitor digital footprints. Using headless Playwright scrapers and semantic DOM diffing algorithms, it isolates pricing tier changes, unannounced feature launches, and messaging updates, synthesizing strategic summaries for product and executive teams.

Inspect GitHub Source Code

01 // THE BUSINESS PROBLEM & SITUATION

Operational Context

Product and marketing teams lack continuous visibility into rival pricing adjustments, feature releases, and positioning changes.

CLIENT / ENVIRONMENT: Engineered for B2B product managers, founders, and marketing directors requiring continuous competitor awareness.

02 // SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE & SOLUTION

What Was Built

Constructed an automated monitoring engine that schedules headless browser crawls, filters dynamic noise, computes semantic text deltas, and generates structured digests.

RIVALTRACE // DOM_DIFF_ENGINEAutomated Crawler Topology

CRAWLER

Playwright Headless

DELTA ENGINE

DOM Tree Diff

SYNTHESIS

LLM Briefing

ALERTS

Slack / Email

SYSTEMS_ARCHITECTURE_EXPLODER // LAYERED_STACKFULL-STACK SYSTEM DECOUPLING

Frontend Layer

Next.js 16 App Router, React 19, Tailwind CSS, TypeScript

API & Middleware

FastAPI, Pydantic Schema Validation, Rate Limiters

Orchestration

LangGraph Multi-Agent Supervisor & State Machines

Model Providers

OpenAI GPT-4o, Anthropic Claude 3.5, Vision AI

Data Stores

PostgreSQL (Prisma), Qdrant Vector Store, Redis Caching

Observability

LangSmith traces, Pydantic audit logs, Error retries

03 // ENGINEERING CONTRIBUTION & FEATURES

Exact Contribution

Engineered Playwright scraper pipeline capable of bypassing dynamic SPA hydration
Developed DOM diffing algorithm to isolate meaningful text shifts from dynamic noise
Built automated Slack and email briefing generation modules using LLM synthesis
Implemented Next.js management dashboard with Stripe subscription billing

Key Capabilities Built

✓ Headless Browser DOM Scraping & Snapshotting

✓ Semantic Change Detection & Noise Filtering

✓ Automated Weekly Executive Briefings (Slack/Email)

✓ Pricing Table Specific Change Tracking

✓ Full Multi-Tenant SaaS Dashboard with Stripe

DATA_PROVENANCE_TIMELINE // AUDIT_TRACETRACE_ID: #TR-992041

14:22:01.002Source Ingestion

Received webhook payloadOK

14:22:01.045Schema Validation

Pydantic structured field checkOK

14:22:01.210LangGraph Reasoning

Evaluated criteria rulesOK

14:22:01.350Human Audit Check

Confidence threshold evaluationPASSED

14:22:01.480Database Commit

Created audit record in PostgreSQLCOMMITTED

*Illustrative system trace — demonstration data, not a client result.

04 // EXECUTION PIPELINE

Step-by-Step Workflow

STEP 01Scheduled cron triggers Playwright crawler on target URL list.

STEP 02Engine captures DOM tree and takes full-page viewport screenshots.

STEP 03Diff algorithm compares new content against historic snapshot baseline.

STEP 04Significant delta triggers LLM module to synthesize an executive summary.

STEP 05Alert dispatches to customer Slack channel and appears in web dashboard.

05 // ENGINEERING LESSONS & OUTCOMES

Technical Challenges Overcome

• Filtering out false positives caused by revolving testimonial carousels and timestamps.
• Handling bot detection mechanisms on protected competitor domains.

Measurable Outcomes

→ Eliminated manual weekly competitor site reviews for participating test teams.

→ Detected pricing model adjustments within 6 hours of competitor deployment in testing.

Lessons & Engineering Rules

"Combining semantic HTML tree inspection with visual screenshots yields the most reliable change detection results."
"Executive users prefer concise 3-bullet strategic summaries over raw text diff logs."

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PROJECT METADATA

ARSLAN'S ROLEFull-Stack Automation Developer

YEAR & STATUS2025 // Open Source

CATEGORYAutomation

TECHNOLOGY STACK

PythonFastAPIPlaywrightNext.jsTypeScriptDockerStripeTailwind CSS

GITHUB METRICS

Stars: 1

Forks: 0

Verified GitHub Update: 8/20/2026

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