Smart Filters never replace an anchor you chose. If you picked an element by hand, that
selector is left alone; the model only adds noise patterns around it.
Enabling Smart Filters
- Go to Dashboard Settings and open the API & Monitoring tab
- Toggle Let AI configure filters for new watches on
How it works
- You add a new watch (from the dashboard, extension, or AI Chat)
- Site Spy captures the first snapshot
- The AI analyzes the page content and applies optimal filters:
- Monitor Only — CSS selectors to focus on the relevant section of the page
- Ignore Text — Regex patterns to exclude noisy text (timestamps, counters, etc.)
- Trigger Text — Patterns that must be present on the page for a notification to be sent at all (only when you specified a condition)
Describing what you want
The dashboard no longer asks you to describe what to track in words — you point at it instead, which is both faster and unambiguous. A description can still reach the model through AI Chat, where you are asking for something explicitly. Deriving filters from a sentence of English turned out to need the model to understand the page, which it does not reliably do; the result was either notifications about everything or about nothing. Pointing removes the guess.What gets filtered
The AI checks the page for these common noise patterns:- Timestamps and times (
3:45 PM,14:30:00) - Dates in various formats (
03/26/2026,2026-03-26) - “Last updated” / “Last modified” lines
- Copyright years (
© 2026) - Cookie consent and GDPR text
- Visitor and view counters (
1,234 views) - Dynamic ad text and sponsored content
- CSRF tokens and session IDs
Limitations
- Smart Filters configure new watches at creation time
- Existing watches are not re-analyzed on a schedule, but a noisy one can be repaired automatically — see below
- The AI needs the first snapshot before it can analyze — there’s a brief delay after watch creation
- Filters are applied automatically but you can always edit them manually in Watch Settings
- The feature works best on text-heavy pages; purely visual pages benefit more from Screenshot Capture
Re-tuning a watch yourself
Click the sparkle button on any watch row — or Re-tune filters in the watch’s settings — to have Site Spy analyze it and rewrite its filters on the spot. This works on any watch, at any time; you don’t have to wait for Site Spy to decide the watch is noisy. The button is highlighted on watches whose measured noise makes re-tuning worth doing. While it runs, the watch shows a Tuning filters… status. That status lives on the watch itself, so you can close the page or reload and it will still be there when you come back. Saving the new filters also queues one immediate check, so the change takes effect straight away rather than at the next scheduled check. If the watch has filters you wrote yourself, Site Spy asks for confirmation first, because re-tuning adds AI-generated filters alongside your own.Automatic noise repair on existing watches
If a watch keeps notifying you about changes you don’t care about, Site Spy can add ignore rules to it after the fact. This runs on the same Smart Filters account setting — so it is off until you switch that on — and then only on watches whose measured noise justifies it. What it does:- Adds up to 5 ignore patterns per repair, and never more than 20 automatic patterns on one watch
- Backtests each proposed pattern against your stored snapshots first, and applies nothing if the patterns would have suppressed real changes
- Leaves your own manual filters untouched — automatic rules are kept in a separate list
- Skips paused watches and watches that are currently failing