Apify Market Monitor

Market Monitor — track competitors and markets over time

Route a monitoring or market-intelligence question to the right Actor, run it, and deliver what changed rather than a raw data dump.

This skill is organized around one task, not a list of platforms: monitoring change over time. Every Actor in the table can be used for recurring observation of a market, competitor set, creator ecosystem, hiring landscape, or pricing environment. Where the Actor supports it (a stable watchlist name, or a monitor mode where offered), the next run compares against the prior run and surfaces the deltas — new breakouts, price and rank moves, supply and rate shifts, hiring momentum, rating shifts — instead of re-dumping rows. That memory cannot be backfilled, so the value compounds on a schedule.

Prerequisites

• Apify account (sign up)
• Authentication via one of:
  • apify login (OAuth, if using the Apify CLI)
  • APIFY_TOKEN environment variable
  • Token from Apify Console → Settings → Integrations
• These Actors render real pages and default to Apify residential proxies, which cost more than datacenter. Confirm scope before a large run (see references/gotchas.md).

Workflow

1. Detect the platform and intent, pick the Actor from the routing table below.
2. Fetch the Actor's input schema so you build a valid input (modes and field names differ per Actor): apify actors info "ACTOR_ID" --input --json --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-market-monitor 2>/dev/null
3. Decide one-shot vs monitoring. For a recurring feed, set a stable watchlistName (or mode: "monitor" where offered) and tell the user the first run establishes the baseline; deltas appear from run 2 onward.
4. Confirm result limits and estimated cost with the user before a large run.
5. Run the Actor, fetch the dataset, and deliver the change briefing first, raw rows only if asked.

Actor routing

Tier = apify (Apify-maintained) or community (third-party developer). Every Actor in this table is a community Actor published by the skill author.

The monitoring pattern (the differentiator)

These Actors are built to run on a schedule. Where the Actor's schema exposes a watchlistName or a monitor mode (confirm in step 2), use it:

1. First run: pass a stable watchlistName (and mode: "monitor" where the schema offers it). This establishes a baseline and returns today's signals.
2. Schedule the same input on a daily or weekly Apify schedule.
3. From run 2 onward, a monitoring-capable Actor returns a change briefing first: what is new, what moved, what went quiet. Trajectory and anomaly reads unlock after a few runs; they cannot be backfilled.

Tell the user this explicitly. A single run is a snapshot; the product is the feed. If an Actor does not expose a watchlist or monitor mode, run it on a schedule and diff the datasets yourself.

Calling Actors — choose your interface

Option A: Apify CLI (recommended for portability)

Three flags on every call: --json (stable output), --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-market-monitor (attribution), 2>/dev/null (suppress progress noise that breaks JSON).

The example inputs below are illustrative. Field names and modes vary by Actor and can change between versions, so always inspect the Actor's input schema (workflow step 2) before building input rather than copying these verbatim.

Worked example — what is breaking out under a TikTok hashtag, kept as a daily feed:

apify actors call "ryanclinton/tiktok-scraper" \
  -i '{"mode":"hashtag","hashtags":["skincare"],"rankBy":"breakoutPotential","watchlistName":"skincare-daily"}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-market-monitor \
  2>/dev/null

Worked example — monitor a set of Amazon ASINs for price, rank and defect changes:

apify actors call "ryanclinton/amazon-product-scraper" \
  -i '{"mode":"monitor","track":["B09X7MPX8L"],"marketplaces":["amazon.com"],"watchlistName":"my-catalog"}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-market-monitor \
  2>/dev/null

Worked example — rank an Airbnb market by pricing opportunity and track it over time:

apify actors call "ryanclinton/airbnb-scraper" \
  -i '{"mode":"monitor","market":"Austin, TX","rankBy":"pricingOpportunity","watchlistName":"austin-str"}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-market-monitor \
  2>/dev/null

For every other Actor in the table, fetch its schema first (step 2 of the workflow) — modes and field names differ — then build the input the same way.

Other useful commands:

# Search the Store if no row fits the user's platform
apify actors search "KEYWORDS" --json --limit 10 --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-market-monitor 2>/dev/null

# Fetch results (first peek)
apify datasets get-items DATASET_ID --limit 5 --format json --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-market-monitor 2>/dev/null

# Full export to CSV
apify datasets get-items DATASET_ID --format csv --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-market-monitor 2>/dev/null > output.csv

Option B: Apify MCP connector

Hosted MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com. Documented at https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp.

Option C: MCP client of your choice

Standalone CLI client. See https://github.com/apify/mcpc.

Do not use this skill when

• The user wants a one-off scrape with no monitoring or change-over-time need — a plain scraper is simpler.
• The user only needs a single URL or record extracted once.
• The user wants historical data from before the first watchlist run — the memory clock cannot be backfilled.
• A platform the user named is not in the routing table — search the Store or use a dedicated skill instead.

Troubleshooting

• Auth failure → run apify login or set APIFY_TOKEN.
• A run returns a snapshot with no deltas → that is run 1 of a watchlist. Schedule it and re-run; deltas appear from run 2.
• Empty or wrong prices on Amazon / Airbnb / Booking → these Actors require residential proxies pinned to the right country; do not override the proxy default to datacenter.
• No row matches the platform the user named → search the Store (command above) and pick the closest Apify-maintained Actor, or tell the user this skill does not cover that platform.
• For cost guardrails and the memory-clock caveat, see references/gotchas.md.