> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.merciv.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Trackers overview

> Set up an always-on research assistant that monitors a topic and delivers stories on a schedule.

A tracker is an always-on research assistant. You describe what to watch — a topic, a set of competitors, a market, a regulation — and the tracker researches it on a recurring schedule (or on demand) and publishes its findings as **stories**: readable research articles that appear on the tracker's page and in your [Discover feed](/discover/overview).

Instead of re-asking the same research question every week, you configure it once and Merciv delivers fresh, non-duplicative updates automatically.

Open **Trackers** from the main navigation sidebar. The list shows all of your trackers as cards, with tabs for **My Trackers**, **Organization Trackers** (visible to organization admins), and **Archived**. Click a card to open the tracker's detail page, which shows its status, next run time, sources, and a timeline of runs and the stories each run produced.

## Create a tracker

<Steps>
  <Step title="Start a new tracker">
    On the Trackers page, click **New**. If you don't have any trackers yet, you can also pick one of three starter templates — **Competitive Brand Monitoring**, **Industry News & Trends**, or **Market & Financial Signals** — which pre-fill the form.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Name it and write a monitoring brief">
    Give the tracker a name, then describe what it should watch in the **Topic** field. Be specific — for example: "Monitor quarterly earnings and guidance from major sneaker brands including Nike, Adidas, and New Balance." Both fields are required.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Choose a schedule">
    Pick a frequency: **Manual**, **Daily**, **Weekly** (the default), or **Monthly**. For scheduled trackers, choose a time of day (in 30-minute increments) plus the day of week (Weekly) or day of month (Monthly). Schedules run in your browser's timezone. The Weekly default is Monday at 9:00 AM.

    Manual trackers never run on their own — they only run when you click **Run Now**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add sources (optional)">
    Add up to 10 website URLs to focus the research on specific sites. Leave the list empty to search broadly.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Create">
    Click **Create**. The tracker appears in your list and runs on its schedule from then on.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Tip>
  Write a concrete monitoring brief. A run with an empty or placeholder topic (like "test") is rejected and recorded as a failed run.
</Tip>

## Personal and organization trackers

* **Personal trackers** (the **My Trackers** tab) are visible and manageable only by you. Any organization member can create one, and its stories appear in your own feed.
* **Organization trackers** are visible and manageable only by organization admins. Their stories are visible to everyone in the organization.

If you're an organization admin, the create form includes **My Tracker** and **Organization Tracker** scope tabs. Admins can also convert a tracker's scope later — see [Managing trackers](/trackers/managing-trackers).

## Create a tracker from chat

You can also set up trackers without leaving a conversation. When you ask Merciv to "track", "monitor", or "keep me updated on" something in [Chat](/chat/overview), it proposes one to three tracker cards showing a name, monitoring brief, frequency, and sources. Edit any proposal, then click **Create** to set it up or **Dismiss** to skip it. Created trackers show a **View in Trackers** link that takes you to the Trackers page.

## What a run produces

Each run is an AI research job. Merciv researches your topic (or generates fresh sub-topics for the period), checks the candidates against stories the tracker has already published so you only get genuinely new material, and writes a story — a research article with citations, a title, and a preview — for each new topic. Processing happens in the background and can take a few minutes.

Finished stories appear on the tracker's page and in your [Discover feed](/discover/overview).

## Next steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Managing trackers" icon="settings-2" href="/trackers/managing-trackers">
    Run on demand, read the run timeline, pause, edit, and archive.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Discover" icon="compass" href="/discover/overview">
    Where tracker stories land, and how to read and act on them.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>