Show HN: AI Chat Watch – analyze what AI say about brands

4 hours ago 1

Track who and what is mentioned by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and other AIs. See who is mentioned first and how often. See which websites are mentioned and cited by AIs. Track trends over time. See influence scores. See how your brand is positioned compared to competitors. AICW is free open-source and runs on your computer. Explore sample reports: https://aichatwatch.com/demo/reports/

ELI5 (Explain like I'm 5 years old)?: AI Chat Watch is a free app that runs on your computer and asks AIs like ChatGPT to answer a set of questions. Then it reads these answers and telling: which companies, people, places, events are mentioned, in which order and how often. If you run it again after some time, it will also tell how answers changed. Best of all, it's open-source and runs on your computer.

Sample Reports
Features
🚀 Quick Start
🎬 AICW in Action
📊 All Sample Reports
💾 Data Storage
🛠️ Development & Contributing
📊 Pipeline Architecture ⭐ NEW
🤝 Support
📄 License
Contacts

✅ Multi-Model Querying - ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and others.
✅ Influence Scoring - Weighted by AI model usage data
✅ Entity Extraction - Identify products, companies, people, places, events mentioned.
✅ Beautiful Reports - Interactive HTML with tables, charts, graphs and drill-downs and advanced filtering.
✅ Historical Trends - Track rising/falling positions and mentions over time
✅ Export to CSV and JSON - Export any data to CSV or access original data in JSON format.
✅ Full Source Code - Audit algorithms, verify calculations, contribute

Run Terminal app and paste this command:

npm install -g @aichatwatch/aicw

Then run by typing:

And press Enter to start AICW (AI Chat Watch) and follow the instructions.

Requirements:

Node.js 18+ (Download)
API key from OpenRouter (recommended, free tier available) or OpenAI or any other AI model provider.

Cost: The software is free. You only pay for AI usage through OpenRouter/OpenAI/Perplexity as you consume it:

Typical cost: $0.01-$0.10 per answer + $0.01-$0.05 per question for enrichment/analysis
Example: 5 questions × 3 AI models = 15 answers + enrichment ≈ $0.30-$1.75 total (depending on which models you select)
You control costs by choosing which models to query (free, mid-tier, or premium) and how many questions to ask.

Interactive CLI menu - Create projects, run pipelines, generate reports, all from your terminal.

View Top Influencers, Filter by AI Model, Filter by Trend - Explore live reports

https://aichatwatch.com/demo/reports/

Sample reports generated by AICW:

Best Cities for Nomads - Travel & lifestyle tracking
Top AI Tools - Technology & platforms
Y Combinator - Analyzing specific topic (Y Combinator)
High Blood Pressure & Hypertension - Healthcare & treatment recommendations from AI models
Best Lawyer for a Startup - Legal services & professionals
and other sample reports

→ Explore all at https://aichatwatch.com/demo/reports/

AICW stores all data locally in platform-specific directories:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/aicw/default-user/data/
Windows: %APPDATA%\aicw\default-user\data\
Linux: ~/.config/aicw/default-user/data/

Data Privacy: All data stays on your machine. AICW doesn't send anything to third parties (except API calls to AI providers you configure).

🛠️ Development & Contributing

AICW is built with TypeScript and designed for extensibility.

git clone https://github.com/aichatwatch/aicw.git cd aicw npm install npm run build npm link # Now 'aicw' command uses your local version aicw

We welcome contributions! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Last updated: 2025-10-14

AICW uses a multi-stage pipeline to transform AI responses into actionable insights. Here's the complete build pipeline flow:

flowchart TD Start([Start]) --> Setup{Select Pipeline} Setup -->|New Project| NewProject[Project: Create New] Setup -->|Build| PrepFolders[Prepare Folders] Setup -->|Rebuild| PrepFolders NewProject --> PrepFolders subgraph Setup["Setup Phase"] PrepFolders[Prepare Question Folders] CleanupCompiled[Cleanup: Remove Old Data] CleanupOrphaned[Cleanup: Remove Orphaned Questions] DataFileCreate[Create Data Files] end PrepFolders --> CleanupCompiled CleanupCompiled --> CleanupOrphaned CleanupOrphaned --> DataFileCreate DataFileCreate --> CheckPipeline{Which Pipeline?} CheckPipeline -->|Full Build| FetchAnswers CheckPipeline -->|Rebuild| ExtractPrompt subgraph DataCollection["Data Collection"] FetchAnswers[Fetch Answers from AI Models] end FetchAnswers --> ExtractPrompt subgraph EntityExtraction["🔍 Entity Extraction"] ExtractPrompt[Prepare Entity Extraction Prompts] ExtractEntities[Extract Entities using AI] ExtractLinks[Extract Links from Answers] end ExtractPrompt --> ExtractEntities ExtractEntities --> ExtractLinks subgraph LinkProcessing["🔗 Link Processing"] GetLinkType[Classify Links by Pattern] GetLinkTypeAI[AI Classification for Unclassified Links] GenLinkTypes[Generate LinkTypes Array] GenLinkDomains[Generate LinkDomains Array] end ExtractLinks --> GetLinkType GetLinkType --> GetLinkTypeAI GetLinkTypeAI --> GenLinkTypes GenLinkTypes --> GenLinkDomains subgraph Enrichment["Enrichment & Calculations"] CalcMentions[Calculate Mentions] CalcAppearance[Calculate Appearance Order] CalcInfluence[Calculate Influence Scores] CalcTrends[Calculate Historical Trends] LinkTypesMentions[Calculate LinkTypes Mentions] LinkTypesAppearance[Calculate LinkTypes Appearance] LinkTypesInfluence[Calculate LinkTypes Influence] LinkTypesTrends[Calculate LinkTypes Trends] GenLinks[Generate Entity URLs using AI] GenSimilar[Generate Similar Terms using AI] GenSummary[Generate AI Summary] end GenLinkDomains --> CalcMentions CalcMentions --> CalcAppearance CalcAppearance --> CalcInfluence CalcInfluence --> CalcTrends CalcTrends --> LinkTypesMentions LinkTypesMentions --> LinkTypesAppearance LinkTypesAppearance --> LinkTypesInfluence LinkTypesInfluence --> LinkTypesTrends LinkTypesTrends --> GenLinks GenLinks --> GenSimilar GenSimilar --> GenSummary subgraph ReportGeneration["📊 Report Generation"] CleanupReports[Cleanup: Remove Old Reports] GenAnswersFile[Generate Answers File] GenReport[Generate HTML Reports] GenNavigation[Generate Project Navigation] ShowSuccess[Show Success Message] end GenSummary --> CleanupReports CleanupReports --> GenAnswersFile GenAnswersFile --> GenReport GenReport --> GenNavigation GenNavigation --> ShowSuccess ShowSuccess --> End([End]) style Start fill:#90EE90 style End fill:#90EE90 style Setup fill:#87CEEB style DataCollection fill:#98FB98 style EntityExtraction fill:#FFD700 style LinkProcessing fill:#FFA500 style Enrichment fill:#DDA0DD style ReportGeneration fill:#87CEFA style NewProject fill:#FFB6C1

pipeline-project-new: Create a new project with questions → Auto-runs pipeline-project-build
pipeline-project-build: Complete pipeline - Fetch fresh AI answers, extract entities, enrich data, generate reports
pipeline-project-rebuild: Rebuild from existing answers - Skip fetch step, reprocess everything else
pipeline-project-rebuild-report-only: Generate reports only - Use existing enriched data, regenerate HTML

Setup Phase (cyan): Prepares project structure and cleans old data
Data Collection (green): Queries AI models for answers (skipped in rebuild)
Entity Extraction (yellow): Identifies companies, products, people, places, events
Link Processing (orange): Classifies URLs and domains by type
Enrichment (purple): Calculates metrics, trends, and generates AI insights
Report Generation (blue): Creates interactive HTML reports with visualizations

Create an Issue if you have any questions or problems

Issues

Elastic License v2 (ELv2) - See LICENSE.md

In plain English:

✅ Run on your computer for any purpose - Personal use, commercial use, business use - completely free with no limits.
✅ Use, modify, and distribute freely
✅ View and audit all source code
✅ You control all costs - Only pay for AI API usage through OpenRouter/OpenAI/Perplexity as you consume it
❌ Cannot offer AICW as a hosted service to others