Trend Monitor Agent Skills: Can We Build Cross-Platform Trend Intelligence on Free APIs?
Trend monitoring is a high-frequency need for AI Agents: GitHub Trending for tech hotspots, Hacker News for discussion热度, Weibo/Zhihu for social dynamics. Our daily-news-brief covers news aggregation, but cross-platform real-time monitoring, anomaly detection, and trend prediction remain gaps.
Trend Monitoring Skills on GitHub
The most notable project is trend-radar (asoiso/trend-radar) — a Chinese internet hotspot tracking Agent Skills suite with 5 pluggable skills:
| Skill | Function | Trigger Words |
|---|---|---|
| trend-monitor | Multi-platform hotspot scanning + emerging keyword extraction | 今日热点/各平台热搜 |
| trend-deep-dive | Single-topic deep analysis (trend/lifecycle/virality prediction) | 深挖 XX/会不会火 |
| trend-alert | Anomaly detection + 9-channel push | 异动告警/监控 XX |
| viral-forge | 6-platform 36-title-pattern viral content generation | 写爆款/抖音脚本 |
| trend-report | Daily/weekly/monthly reports (3 audience templates) | 日报/周报/digest |
Architecture: each skill installs independently, SKILL.md defines the spec, trendradar MCP server provides backend API. The Pipeline closed-loop design is worth borrowing: discover→analyze→alert→create→summarize.
Our Capabilities and Gaps
| Capability | Ours (daily-news-brief etc.) | trend-radar | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-platform aggregation | web-research-via-curl single-point | Weibo/Zhihu/Douyin aggregated scan | Missing cross-platform |
| Anomaly detection/push | None | Real-time + 9-channel push | Missing alerting |
| Trend lifecycle | framework-and-tool-research (tech only) | Trend/lifecycle/virality prediction | Missing prediction |
| Viral content generation | None | 6-platform 36 templates | Missing content creation |
| Periodic reports | daily-news-brief (3 variants) | 3 audience template reports | Roughly equal |
| Self-hosted/free | All curl-based, zero cost | Depends on trendradar MCP server | Ours is lighter |
Core gaps: cross-platform real-time aggregation, anomaly detection with push, trend prediction.
Free API Feasibility
Without paid MCP servers, what can we use?
| Platform | Free Interface | Feasibility | Limitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Trending | Page scraping (curl) | High | No official API, but stable page structure |
| Hacker News | Official API (curl) | High | Completely free, no limits |
| ProductHunt | Unofficial GraphQL | Medium | Requires auth, rate limits |
| Weibo Hot Search | Page scraping | Medium | Strong anti-scraping, needs CDP |
| Zhihu Hot List | Page scraping | Medium | Moderate anti-scraping |
| Douyin Hot Search | Page scraping | Low | Extreme anti-scraping |
Key finding: English tech community (GitHub, HN) free APIs are fully usable; Chinese social platforms (Weibo, Zhihu) need CDP assistance but are feasible; Douyin-level anti-scraping is impractical.
Borrowing Value and Recommendation
High Value: Pipeline Closed-Loop
trend-radar's monitor→deep-dive→alert→forage→report flow design chains scattered information processing into a closed loop. Our existing skills operate independently, lacking this upstream-downstream connection.
Borrowable designs:
- Bilingual trigger words — lower usage barrier
- Agent Skills open spec (agentskills.io) — compatible with 30+ clients
- MCP Server architecture — skill layer only does prompt orchestration, unified backend
Recommended approach:
Build trend-monitor skill on top of web-research-via-curl. Core features:
- Aggregated scanning: GitHub Trending (curl) + HN API (curl) + Weibo Hot Search (CDP)
- Brief generation: Reuse daily-news-brief's structured output format
- Trend deduplication: Compare with historical briefs to identify truly new trends
Not doing yet: Alert push (requires persistent runtime), viral content generation (not core need), trend prediction (needs historical data accumulation).
Zero cost, significant value increment. This is a natural extension of existing daily-news-brief, not a replacement.
Sources:
- trend-radar: https://github.com/asoiso/trend-radar (Apache-2.0)
- Hacker News API: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
- GitHub Trending: https://github.com/trending (page scraping)
- daily-news-brief: Hermes Agent built-in skill
- web-research-via-curl: Hermes Agent built-in skill