Every morning the day's headlines from my media are ready in a dashboard. Every Sunday a report is ready on what worked for the 20 profiles I follow, which ads they are running, and what people are searching for. The week's content plan is written on top of it.
All of it runs on free plans. Apify gives you 5 dollars a month to pull data for, Firecrawl gives you 1,000 credits a month, both without a card. Google Trends costs nothing. The only thing you need is a Claude account.
Three tools, each with its own kind of news
Apify: the 20 profiles I follow
Competitors and accounts in my niche, chosen once and saved in Apify. Every Sunday, Instagram Scraper pulls their posts from the last week, with likes, comments and views. Then I see what their strongest content was, and which format, which CTA and which type of hook was behind it. The list is the filter. Without it, the report drowns in posts that have nothing to do with me.
Firecrawl: the day's headlines, every morning
Headlines from selected media at home and abroad. News about AI, and the general news that affects my customers. Firecrawl pulls the front pages as plain text, and Claude collects the headlines in a dashboard with a link to each article, so I read on where it is relevant. What else Firecrawl can do is in the Firecrawl guide.
Google Trends: what people search for
Which keywords are rising in Denmark, and which are falling. My own keywords, and my clients'. Apify pulls the numbers for the Sunday report through Google Trends Scraper. If it is one word I want to see, I open trends.google.com myself. What I learned when I set it up for a client: use 12 months and no category. Three months and a category filter gave too little data for Denmark, and then it looks as if nobody is searching. I use the same numbers for more than content: keywords for Google Ads, and to see where the business should grow.
Meta's Ad Library, before I conclude anything
A reel with 150,000 views can be paid traffic. When I ran my first competitor analysis, it turned out that the most viewed reel from my closest competitor had been running as an ad for two and a half months. The follower growth was bought. That is why Apify also pulls the competitors' active ads and how long each has been running. If an ad runs for three months, it makes money. Then the lesson is a different one from "that format works organically".
Two rhythms: every morning and every Sunday
The morning task is small. Firecrawl fetches the front pages of my media, and Claude builds the dashboard. Ten outlets is ten credits a day, about 300 a month of the 1,000.
The Sunday task is the big one. Apify pulls the week's posts from the 20 profiles and their ads, the Google Trends numbers for the keywords, and Claude reads last week's report before it writes the new one. The difference from the week before is what I can act on. A snapshot is just a list.
The report ends with three suggestions for the week's content, each with one line called why now: a post that worked for the 20, a piece of news from the week, or a keyword that is rising. The content plan is written on top of those three lines, and it covers everything: posts, blog posts, articles, the newsletter and what gets cross-posted to other channels.
The numbers are one half. The other is my original ideas. During the week I dictate them into Wispr Flow, one at a time, as they come. On Sunday, Claude reads the notes together with the report, and the content plan becomes a mix of what is moving out there and what I want to say myself. The mix keeps it authentic: my own concepts, blended with data that holds up.
How to get started
1. Create the two accounts
Apify at apify.com and Firecrawl at firecrawl.dev. Both free plans, no card.
2. Connect them to Claude
Customize, then Connectors. Firecrawl is in the catalogue. Apify is added as Add custom connector with https://mcp.apify.com. Log in in the browser. No key to copy.
3. Write your three lists
20 profiles you want to follow, with full profile links and one line about why each is on the list. The media you want headlines from. Five to ten keywords. The prompt below asks you for them and saves them in the project.
4. Create a project in Claude and paste the prompt
It sets up both tasks together with you, runs them once while you watch, and only turns them into scheduled tasks when you have said ok.
You are my market radar. We are going to set up two scheduled tasks in Claude: the day's news every morning, and the week's radar every Sunday. Go one step at a time, and wait for my "ok" between each. Step 0. Ask about the browser. Ask whether you may use my browser (Claude in Chrome) so you can click and fill in the fields for me. If I say yes, you do it and I watch. If I say no, you guide me instead. You never type passwords. I do that myself. Step 1. The accounts. Apify at apify.com: free plan with 5 dollars a month to pull data for. Firecrawl at firecrawl.dev: free plan with 1,000 credits a month. Neither requires a card. Step 2. The connection. In Claude: Customize, then Connectors. Firecrawl is in the catalogue. Apify is added with plus, Add custom connector. Name: Apify. URL: https://mcp.apify.com. Connect, and approve in the browser. Step 3. My three lists. Ask me for them, one at a time, and save them as three files in the project: - profiles.md: 20 Instagram profiles I want to follow. Full profile links, never usernames, the username field fails in Apify. One line per profile about why it is on the list. - media.md: the media I want headlines from, at home and abroad, with a link to the front page. And one line about which industry I am in, so you know what "news in my industry" means. - keywords.md: five to ten keywords for Google Trends. Also create the folder "radar/notes". That is where I put the week's ideas, dictated in Wispr Flow. Step 4. The morning task, every day at 7. Fetch the front page of every outlet in media.md with Firecrawl. Pull the headlines about my industry and the general news that could affect my customers. Build one dashboard as a single HTML file in my design system: headline, outlet and link to each article, sorted by outlet. No summaries, only headlines and links. Save the file in the folder "radar/news" with the date in the filename. Step 5. The Sunday task, every Sunday at 7. 1. Apify Instagram Scraper on the 20 profiles, only posts from the last 7 days. Pull only the fields you need: username, type, caption, likes, comments, views, timestamp. Sort by likes and comments. Show the ten strongest with format, CTA and hook type. 2. Apify Facebook Ads Library Scraper on the same pages: active ads and how long each has been running. If one of the week's strongest posts is running as an ad, note it next to the post. 3. Google Trends for the keywords in keywords.md: my country, 12 months, no category. What is rising, what is falling. 4. Read last week's report in the folder "radar/week" and write what has changed since then. 5. Read my notes from the week in the folder "radar/notes". They are ideas I have dictated into Wispr Flow. They are the other half of the week's content. 6. Write the report: what worked, what is new, what is rising, what has changed. End with three suggestions for this week's content, each with one line called "why now", backed by a number, a link or one of my notes. The suggestions cover posts, blog posts, articles, the newsletter and what can be cross-posted to other channels. Save the report in "radar/week" with the date in the filename. Step 6. My rules. Save them in the project: - Never invented numbers. Every claim comes with a number or a link. - Run small. Only pull the profiles, outlets and fields that are on the lists. - Mechanics, format and choice of topic may inspire. Wording and sentences may not. If a sentence could stand word for word at the account we just looked at, rewrite it. Step 7. First run. Run both tasks once now while I watch, and show me the result. Only when I have said ok do we set them up as scheduled tasks.
Price
20 profiles with about seven posts a week is around 140 results. That is under half a dollar per Sunday with Instagram Scraper, and the Google Trends runs were about 20 cents a week when I tested them. That stays within the 5 dollars a month on Apify's free plan. Firecrawl's 1,000 credits cover the morning task with plenty of room. Run small, and only pull what is on the lists.
The market radar is part of my content agent. The rest of the tools, and what each of them is hired to do, are in my tech stack. What else Apify can pull is in the Apify guide.
The short version is on Instagram.
