Checks selected NZ Fast-track approval project pages for:

• new project subpages
• new files or links on tracked pages
• removed files or links
• changed link text
• changed project or subpage text

Page text changes include a compact diff showing removed lines with - and added lines with +.

Updates are sent to Discord using a webhook. The tracker stores its previous run in fasttrack_state.json and writes runtime logs to fasttrack_tracker.log.

These commands assume the project lives at /home/pi/FastTrack_Tracker on the Raspberry Pi.

cd /home/pi/FastTrack_Tracker
python3 -m venv venv
./venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt

Create a .env file:

nano .env

Add your Discord webhook URL:

DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL=https://discord.com/api/webhooks/...

Run the tracker once manually:

./venv/bin/python tracker.py

The first successful run creates fasttrack_state.json as the baseline. It should not alert for all existing content on that first run. Future runs compare against that baseline.

Edit the PROJECTS list in tracker.py and add or remove Fast-track project URLs.

After changing the list, run:

./venv/bin/python tracker.py

New projects will be baselined on their first run.

Open the Pi user's crontab:

crontab -e

Example: run every hour:

0 * * * * cd /home/pi/FastTrack_Tracker && /home/pi/FastTrack_Tracker/venv/bin/python /home/pi/FastTrack_Tracker/tracker.py >> /home/pi/FastTrack_Tracker/cron.log 2>&1

The script also writes its own log file:

tail -f /home/pi/FastTrack_Tracker/fasttrack_tracker.log

The cron redirection above writes a separate cron.log, which is useful for cron-level errors such as a bad path or missing Python executable.

Use these to confirm cron is running:

tail -n 100 /home/pi/FastTrack_Tracker/fasttrack_tracker.log
tail -n 100 /home/pi/FastTrack_Tracker/cron.log

If a project scrape fails or the script hits a fatal error, the traceback is logged locally and sent to Discord.

This tracker intentionally uses curl_cffi with Chrome impersonation. The Fast-track site blocks normal requests traffic, so requests is not used as a fallback.