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discatch for developer tools

Developer conversation happens in threads, not feeds. The places that matter are Hacker News comments, Discourse support threads, GitHub Issues and Discussions, Stack Overflow questions, and blog posts. These are the sources discatch reads directly today. dcouple builds three developer tools: Doozy (agent-native todos), Pane (a coding agent orchestrator), and Bloom (a design system). All three are watched with discatch before asking anyone else to use it. The competitor-watch, forum-triage, and changelog-listen playbooks were written from that experience. Only a DEV post and OpenScout have a landing page for "social listening for developer tools" today. Octolens’s customer logos are developer tools too: Vercel, PostHog, Supabase, Railway, Lovable.

The sources that matter
Hacker News, Discourse forums, GitHub, Stack Overflow, web, and news are the first set, roadmap phase 1b, which has not shipped yet; the doctor manifest says what is live. Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, and Product Hunt are planned. These are where developers ask questions, file bugs, compare tools, and discuss releases. Reddit, X, and LinkedIn are reserved until a cleared path exists; indexed posts from those networks arrive as web results with a domain field today.
dcouple is the case study
dcouple watches Doozy, Pane, and Bloom on discatch across all available sources. Doozy catches surface questions about its MCP integration. Pane catches surface mentions when an engineer names it in a Hacker News thread. Bloom catches surface issues in Discourse forums that run on its components. The playbooks come from this use.
Forum triage
Watch any public Discourse forum by URL with a site: query. The forum-triage playbook classifies threads into bug, question, feature request, or praise using the classify flag and your own criteria. Bugs file to GitHub Issues with a link back to the thread. Questions route to whoever answers them. No other tool in the category gives Discourse a dedicated page.
Changelog reactions
After a release, the changelog-listen playbook reads your changelog, builds one query per feature name plus the version string, and registers a catch per query at one hour across Hacker News, GitHub, Discourse, and the web. Each catch routes to the owning engineer. Catches live for about a week and cost nothing when they fire nothing.
Per-unit pricing for tools
A developer tool with a small user base runs a handful of queries a day. Octolens Pro at $199 monthly ($159 annual) and Scale at $599 monthly ($499 annual), read from octolens.com/pricing on 2026-09-10, are the wrong shape for that. discatch starts free on free sources, then charges per unit at fractions of a cent. No per-keyword charge.
Push to your agent
Register a catch with a destination. When it fires, discatch calls your webhook (signed with HMAC-SHA256), your Claude Code or Codex command, a Doozy todo, or a GitHub dispatch. No polling and no dashboard tab left open. MCP is pull-only by spec, so catches are why the agent does not have to poll.

Playbooks for you

forum-triage

Forum triage
Watches a Discourse forum by URL, classifies threads into bug, question, feature request, or praise, and files bugs to GitHub Issues with a link back.
alertresultclassify

changelog-listen

Changelog listen
After a release, catches reactions mentioning the version or the feature names from the changelog and routes each to the engineer who owns that area.
alertresult

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

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

What sources does developer conversation happen on?

Hacker News comments, Discourse support threads, GitHub Issues and Discussions, Stack Overflow questions, and blog posts. These are the sources discatch reads directly today. Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, and Product Hunt are planned. Reddit, X, and LinkedIn are reserved; indexed posts from those networks arrive as web results with a domain field.

How does dcouple use discatch?

dcouple watches its three products, Doozy, Pane, and Bloom, across all available sources with catches at one hour. The competitor-watch playbook tracks mentions of similar tools. The forum-triage playbook watches Discourse forums and files bugs. The changelog-listen playbook catches reactions after a release. The playbooks were written from that daily use.

What does it cost for a small developer tool?

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. Prices are placeholders until provider costs and terms are settled. The quote at call time is the real price.

Can I watch my Discourse community forum?

Yes. Discourse forums are a first-class source. Use site:community.example.com in the query to restrict to one forum. The forum-triage playbook classifies threads into bug, question, feature request, or praise and files bugs to GitHub Issues with a link back. No other tool in the category gives Discourse forums a dedicated page with per-forum watching.

Does discatch post replies for me?

Never. The reply-draft playbook gives your agent a voice file and a set of rules. Your agent drafts in your voice and leaves the draft where you review it. You post through the platform’s own interface. discatch never posts on any platform on your behalf. Reddit removed 40M or more spam posts in H1 2025.

How is this different from GitHub notifications?

GitHub notifications tell you about activity in your own repositories. discatch catches issues in other repositories that mention your tool by name, READMEs that list your package, questions about your API on Stack Overflow, and support threads on Discourse and Hacker News. It crosses the boundary between your code and the conversation about your code.

Can I watch a competitor’s mentions too?

Yes. The competitor-watch playbook sets up one catch per competitor name 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 about Reddit?

Indexed Reddit posts arrive as web results with a domain field today, so Google-indexed Reddit threads appear and you can filter on them. Direct Reddit coverage with full comment threads, and free Reddit alerts, are planned once a cleared path exists. Reddit’s API pricing is $12,000 a month at the floor, which is why every tool in the category reaches Reddit a different way.

Is there an MCP server?

Planned for roadmap phase 3, with OAuth 2.1 and PKCE at mcp.discatch.com. Until it ships the REST API with a trial key is the surface. Catches push independently of MCP because MCP is pull-only by spec. Both reach the same account once claimed.

What query syntax does discatch use?

Quotes, AND, OR, NOT, site:, author:, lang:, and grouping with parentheses. The planner translates the query per source, then re-filters every result locally against the full boolean query. A source with a weaker native search still returns correct results from a larger candidate set.

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