I spent 1h with opencode creating a webscraper to check for hut availability dates every x mins. This is linked up to a telegram bot to send me a message with the booking link if a spot was found. The most tedious parts of this was:
- debugging why the tool wasn't hitting the right points on the web page
- figuring out a free way to run this when GitHub Actions turned unreliable
It's pretty cool to see how fast and effective open source tools can be. I liked that it was able to handle all sorts of error scenarios I presented, and help with deployment configs when I had to switch it around. From a frontend perspective, the quick turnaround time presented me with opportunities to refine the UX, such as having the telegram bot present a message with a useful booking link for me to click on instead of just informing me that a slot was available.