Should you build your own CueScout?
Tracks AI visibility on Perplexity and ChatGPT, mines Reddit and Hacker News for buyer questions, and turns the gaps into a dated writing plan
The visibility-check loop is the weekend-buildable half: generate buyer questions, run them through Perplexity and ChatGPT, detect brand and competitor mentions, normalize citations, and score a GEO number. That much is close to what a $49/mo plan actually ships, since Basic only covers one engine. What does not fit in a prompt is the continuous Reddit and Hacker News scan that mines buyer questions from real threads instead of guessing them, the writing-plan-to-draft loop that turns a score into dated work, and weeks of trend history without which one run tells you almost nothing.
ENOriginal research content in English. Original prompt preserved in English.
Build me a local AI buyer-question visibility tracker for one product. Requirements:
- Node 22, TypeScript, SQLite via better-sqlite3, a CLI, and a plain server-rendered dashboard. Local only, no accounts, no telemetry.
- product.json holds my product name, aliases, domain, and up to 5 competitor names.
- `track questions` generates 20 buyer-intent questions from the product name and a one-paragraph description, or accepts a JSON list I supply.
- `track run` sends every question through Perplexity's API and OpenAI's Chat Completions API with web search enabled where supported. Keys live in .env.
- Store one immutable row per run, question, and provider: raw answer, cited URLs, model id, and error text. Never overwrite a prior run.
- Retry transient failures twice with backoff; keep failed cells visible in the report instead of dropping them.
- Detect brand and competitor mentions case-insensitively against the alias list.
- Normalize citation URLs to hostname plus canonical path, strip tracking parameters, then compute a top-sources table and an owned-domain citation rate.
- Compute one GEO score per run: mention rate times citation rate, shown with the raw counts behind it, never just the number.
- `track serve` renders visibility over time by provider, share of voice against each competitor, and the sources table.
- `track export` writes questions, answers, mentions, and citations to CSV.
- Fixture tests for mention detection, URL normalization, and the GEO score calculation.
- Out of scope: Reddit/Hacker News monitoring, Google rank tracking, writing-plan or content generation, hosted sharing, teams, and billing.
- README: setup, per-run API cost estimate, and a cron line for a daily run.The prompt opens pre-filled in your agent. Review it before running.
What would building your own look like?
Generate buyer questions for a product, run them through Perplexity and ChatGPT, detect brand and competitor mentions, collect citations, and score a basic GEO number.
What you will need
- Perplexity API key
- OpenAI API key
- durable per-run storage
- a scheduler for repeat runs
They're paying for the parts that don't fit in a prompt: a script that runs every day for months without babysitting, buyer questions mined from real Reddit and Hacker News threads instead of guessed ones, a writing plan and AI-ready drafts wired to the same gaps the scores found, and a link they can hand a client. None of that is a moat a bigger company can't cross; it's the upkeep most people quit paying attention to by week three.
xthe continuous Reddit and Hacker News scan and buyer-question clustering, which finds where buyers are already asking instead of guessing questions to feed a model
xGoogle rank badges on matched threads, sourced from a paid search API
xthe writing-plan-to-draft loop that turns a gap into a dated 30-day plan and AI-ready page drafts, not just a dashboard number
xweeks of trend history and a competitor 'what moved' digest; a single run is mostly noise
xa hosted, shareable report link you can hand a client without exposing your own infra
Prefer something ready-made?
ElmoCovers the visibility-check half well; it has no Reddit/HN buyer-thread mining and no writing-plan or draft generation on top of the scores.Open source↗License, setup, and limitations for each alternative.
How much does CueScout cost?
- Monthly billing
- $49/mo$49/mo
- Per year
- $588/yr$588/yr
- Annual billing
- $490/yr17% cheaper than paying monthly
- On a Brazilian card, with 3.5% IOF
- R$256/moR$2,560/yr
Saved to My list. You will see a notice on this site when the price changes.
You complete the purchase on CueScout’s site. Vibe Radar does not handle payments.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per month) | What is included |
|---|---|---|---|
| basic | $49/workspace≈ $49 | $40.83/workspace≈ $40.83 | 1 product; 450 checks/month (15/day); Perplexity only; scans every 24 hours; 3 plan regenerations/week; 20 drafts/month; 1 report. |
| growth | $189/workspace≈ $189 | $157.50/workspace≈ $158 | 3 products; 1,200 checks/month (40/day); ChatGPT and Perplexity; scans every 12 hours/product; 10 plan regenerations/week; 80 drafts/month; 3 reports. |
| agency | $249/workspace≈ $249 | $199.17/workspace≈ $199 | 10 products; 3,600 checks/month; ChatGPT and Perplexity; scans every 6 hours/product; 30 plan regenerations/week; 240 drafts/month; 10 reports. |
| founder pack | custom | - | 30 days of Basic-level access for 1 product. |
Free tierno free tier
Billing termsmonthly, quarterly, or annual; annual plans are billed upfront
Additional costsMore than 10 products requires custom pricing.
verified 2026-10-20 · source ↗
Is it cheaper to build or buy CueScout?
Adjust the numbers: hours to build, your hourly rate, running costs and the subscription price.
Over 24 months, subscribing is cheaper.
Starting hours estimated from the analysis (multi-day). Does not price what you give up (support, integrations, security).
Can I rebuild CueScout?
Kinda. The core of CueScout is buildable in a weekend with the prompt on this page, but there are real gaps: the continuous Reddit and Hacker News scan and buyer-question clustering, which finds where buyers are already asking instead of guessing questions to feed a model, Google rank badges on matched threads, sourced from a paid search API. Read the honest list above before committing.
How much does CueScout cost?
CueScout costs about $49/mo (Starter, checked 10/20/2026), which is $490 per year.
What do I lose by replacing CueScout?
Honestly: the continuous Reddit and Hacker News scan and buyer-question clustering, which finds where buyers are already asking instead of guessing questions to feed a model; Google rank badges on matched threads, sourced from a paid search API; the writing-plan-to-draft loop that turns a gap into a dated 30-day plan and AI-ready page drafts, not just a dashboard number; weeks of trend history and a competitor 'what moved' digest; a single run is mostly noise; a hosted, shareable report link you can hand a client without exposing your own infra. If any of those are load-bearing for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to CueScout?
Yes: Elmo (Covers the visibility-check half well; it has no Reddit/HN buyer-thread mining and no writing-plan or draft generation on top of the scores.) The prompt is for when you want it exactly your way.