Getting Started with WatchDeck Cloud
This guide walks you from a fresh signup to a healthy first check. It should take about five minutes.
Looking for the open-source version instead? See the Self-Host getting-started guide.
Before you start
You’ll need:
- A public HTTPS endpoint to monitor (a healthcheck route, an API endpoint, or a marketing page).
- An email address and a password (8+ characters) — or a GitHub / Google account if you’d rather sign in with OAuth.
Quick start
Create your account
Head to app.watchdeck.dev and sign up with email + password, or pick the Continue with GitHub / Continue with Google option. New email accounts receive a confirmation link — click it, then sign in.
Add your first endpoint
From the dashboard, click Add endpoint and paste the URL you want to monitor. WatchDeck will run a one-shot probe immediately so you can see the response shape before saving.
Pick a check policy
Choose how often the endpoint should be checked and what counts as healthy. The defaults — every minute, expected status [200], response under 5 seconds — are sane for most APIs. You can layer assertions on body, headers, JSON paths, latency, or SSL on top later.
Wire up alerts
Add at least one notification channel — email, Slack, Discord, or a generic webhook. Without a channel, drift will be recorded but no one will hear about it.
Watch the first results land
Within one check interval (one minute on the default schedule) the endpoint card flips to Healthy. The detail page shows the rolling uptime bar, latency trend, and the most recent response payload.
What’s next
- Define assertions — assert on JSON fields, headers, or response substrings so you catch silent regressions, not just outages.
- Wire more notification channels — Slack, Discord, or a generic webhook.
- Read incidents — see how WatchDeck groups consecutive failures into a single incident, and what controls open vs resolve.
- Troubleshooting — common gotchas if your first check doesn’t behave as expected.
The Cloud overview lists the full surface area of the product. For plan tiers and per-tier caps, see Pricing.
WatchDeck Cloud is in active development. See the changelog for what’s shipping.