Setting up Forecast watches

A watch is a saved filter over the Forecast surface that fires an alert when a new prediction lands matching the filter. Watches are how you turn Forecast from a daily-browse surface into a push surface.

Creating a watch

Three ways to start:

1. From the Forecast view. Click "Watch this" on any prediction card — the watch is seeded with the prediction's agency, signal types, and keyword set.
2. From scratch at /watches (Settings → Watches). Click "New watch" and fill in the filter manually.
3. From a search result. Saved searches and watches share infrastructure — the "Save as watch" button on /search creates a watch from the active filter set.

Filter fields

Each watch carries:

• Agencies. Multi-select. Limit by federal civilian agency or sub-component (e.g., HHS:CMS).
• Signal types. Pre-RFP, sources-sought, RFI, budget allocation, market research. Any subset.
• Keywords. Boolean expression — "AI OR ML AND NOT autonomous". The keyword pass is applied to the prediction rationale.
• Vendors. Optional. Limit to predictions where named vendors appear in source citations.
• Confidence floor. Default 0.40. Alerts only fire above this floor.

Alert delivery

Alerts deliver in three channels:

• Email. Default. Lands at the watcher's account email within 5 minutes of the prediction landing.
• Webhook. Pro+ tier. Configured at /settings/webhooks. Fires a watch.alert_fired event with the full prediction payload.
• In-app. A bell badge appears on the top nav with the count of unread alerts.

Frequency control

By default a watch can fire at most once per agency per day to avoid noise. You can override this per watch from its row on /watches (Settings → Watches):

• Every match — every new prediction
• Daily digest — one alert per day at 09:00 local with all matches batched
• Off — the watch still tracks matches but does not alert

Limits

These match WATCH_LIMIT_BY_TIER in lib/tier-gates.ts exactly. Watches are a paid feature: the Free tier cannot create one.

Disabling a watch

Hit "Pause" on the watch detail page. Paused watches retain their filter set but do not fire. Hit "Delete" to remove entirely.