Docs / Alerts
When an alert fires
How each watch decides what is too high or too low, and how to set your own limit.
In short: every watch gets its own alert rules from its own history, so a busy watch and a quiet one are each judged by their own normal. Add your own on a watch's page in the app (Add a rule): a limit, such as "below 10 in 24 hours", or a change, such as "3 times the usual". A rule you set is never changed for you.
Each watch gets its own automatic rules, picked from its own history, so a busy watch and a quiet one are judged differently: up to the plan's automatic rules per watch (Free 2, Pro 4). A rule is written in times usual: 1H ×4 fires when the last hour is 4 times its usual level; 24H ×0.3 when a day falls to 30% of usual. Automatic rules can change as CountWatch learns a watch. When no rule fits a watch, the import result says so and suggests a fixed limit.
Your own rules. POST /v1/rules sets a rule for a metric (all its watches, now and later) or one watch (its spike, drop or limit rules override the metric's of the same kind): a change {direction, hours, times_usual} replaces the automatic rules of its direction, a fixed limit {bound: max | min, hours, limit} is added. A rule you set is never changed automatically; the answer estimates how often a watch rule would have alerted. GET /v1/rules?watch_id= shows every rule in force; DELETE /v1/rules/{rule_id} goes back to automatic.
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