# A 4-hourly watchdog for stale feeds and broken imports
By The Workshaped Lab · Tier: Workflow integration · Industry: Cross-industry · Function: Monitoring & Reporting · Mode: Human approval · Autonomy: Read-only · Prompt tested: 2026-10-14 (gpt-5-mini, synthetic sample, checked by hand)
Provenance: Running in our own lab. Tools: Your exports / sheets / database, n8n or cron, Email or Slack

Automations fail quietly: an import stops, a sheet stops updating, an export comes in empty. A watchdog checks each feed on a schedule and says plainly what's stale and since when.

## The problem
Most small-business automations have no monitoring. A broken Zapier step, an expired login or a renamed column means the data just stops, and nobody notices until a report is wrong or a customer complains days later.

## Why it works
Staleness is a rule, not a judgement: "this feed should update every 24 hours and the newest row is 3 days old". Code checks it. A model is optional, only to write the alert in plain words. Alerts go to a person once per problem, not every 4 hours.

## Who it's for
Anyone running more than two automations, imports or scheduled exports their business depends on.

## Step by step
1. List each feed: where it lives, how often it should update, the date column to check, and who owns it.
2. Every 4 hours, read the newest timestamp and row count of each feed.
3. Flag: newest row older than allowed, row count zero or far below normal, required column missing.
4. Send one alert per new problem with the owner, the feed and how long it's been stale.
5. Send a 'recovered' note when it's fixed. Keep a log.

## Pitfalls to avoid
- Alerting every run trains people to ignore it: alert on change only.
- Weekends and holidays: set expected gaps per feed.
- Timezones: store and compare in one zone.
- Don't let the watchdog 'fix' feeds; restarting the wrong thing can duplicate data.

## Free kickstart prompt (paste into Claude, ChatGPT or Grok)
```
Help me set up a simple watchdog for the data feeds my business depends on.
Here is my list of feeds (name, where it lives, how often it should update, owner):
[PASTE LIST]
And here is the latest status I can see for each (newest timestamp, row count today, row count normally):
[PASTE STATUS]
1. Tell me which feeds are stale or broken right now and why, in a table: feed, problem, stale since, owner, suggested first check.
2. For each feed, write the exact rule I should monitor (e.g. "newest row older than 26 hours on weekdays").
3. Write the alert message template and the "recovered" template, plain and short.
Don't assume a feed is fine if I gave no data for it; mark it "unknown".
```

Web: https://workshaped.ai/use-cases/watchdog/