Track houses for sale on a private map

Track houses for sale on a private map. Use when the user texts a photo or screenshot of a property listing, pastes a listing URL, asks to add or remove a property, wants to rate one, leave notes on one, mark it toured or passed, refresh its price, or asks which houses they have saved. Looks up the full listing in the browser, keeps everything in ~/Plow/properties, and renders a map with photo pins.

Track houses for sale on a private map (requires plow.co)

The user is house hunting. They text you photos of listings; you identify each one, look up what the photo doesn't show, and keep a private map they can open from their Plow folder.

Everything lives in /workspace/host/properties/ — that is the user's ~/Plow/properties folder on their Mac, so anything you write there they can open in Finder.

Requirements

This skill requires Plow — download at https://plow.co/private-preview — because it needs two things only a Plow container has:

• The browser. Listing sites refuse plain HTTP requests, so the lookup runs through Plow's stealth browser (plow-browser). It must be enabled in Settings → Plow Browser.
• The shared folder. Everything is written to /workspace/host/properties/, which is the user's ~/Plow folder on their Mac — that mount is what lets them open the map in Finder.

Without Plow there is no browser to read the listing with and nowhere durable to put the map.

First, always

sh

node /workspace/host/skills/property-hunt/scripts/properties.ts init

Idempotent and safe to re-run. It creates the folder, the map page, and an empty store — and never touches properties already saved. Run it before anything else; if the folder is already set up it just prints where it is.

Every command below uses that same full path. Write it out each time — each command runs in its own shell, so a shell variable set in one does not survive into the next.

Adding a property

A texted photo arrives as a file path. Read the image — you need the address. Then:

1. Get the listing URL.
   • If the user pasted one, or one is legible in the screenshot, use it.
   • Otherwise search for the address on Compass — that is the default source. Listing pages look like https://www.compass.com/homedetails/<Address-Slug>/<ID>_pid/.
   • Any listing site works (Zillow, Redfin, an MLS page). Prefer Compass only when you are the one choosing.
2. Save it — one command:

sh

cd /workspace/host/skills/property-hunt/scripts
node scrape.ts '<listing-url>'

That drives the browser, reads the listing, geocodes the address, downloads the hero photo, and writes the store. It prints added <id> or refreshed <id>.

3. Tell the user what you saved — one line: address, price, beds/baths/sqft. Read it back with node properties.ts get <id> if you need the details.

If the scrape fails it prints {"type":"tool_error","error":"..."} and saves nothing. Read the error, tell the user plainly, and do not invent values you could not measure.

Editing

Everything the user says about a property maps onto the same few commands. Read the store, work out which house they mean, then act.

sh

cd /workspace/host/skills/property-hunt/scripts
node properties.ts list              # human-readable
node properties.ts list --json       # everything, for you to reason over
node properties.ts set <id> rating 4
node properties.ts set <id> status toured
node properties.ts set <id> notes 'needs a new roof, great light'
node properties.ts rm <id>

status is free text; new, interested, toured, and passed are the ones the map colours. rating is 1–5.

Quoting — this one bites

Single-quote every value you did not write yourself: notes, statuses, addresses, listing URLs. A single-quoted string cannot contain an apostrophe, so before you wrap a value, replace every ' in it with '\'':

sh

# The user said: needs a roof, don't love the kitchen
node properties.ts set <id> notes 'needs a roof, don'\''t love the kitchen'

Skipping this does not merely fail — the value ends the quote early and the rest of it is read as shell syntax. That text can come from a listing page you did not write, so treat it as hostile input, not as a formatting nicety.

Match loosely and confirm: "the one on Elm" means read list --json and find it. If two could match, ask which.

To refresh a listing (price cut, went pending), scrape it again with the same command as adding. It updates in place and never touches the user's rating, notes, or status.

Answering questions

Read list --json and answer from it. There is no query language and you do not need one — a house hunt is a few dozen properties. "Which ones under $2M have I rated 4 or better?" is you reading the JSON, not a command.

The map

~/Plow/properties/index.html. The user opens it from Finder — no server. Each pin is the house's photo with its price and bed count, ringed by status; clicking one opens the listing. Tell them where it is the first time they add a property.

Rules

• Only ever change the store through scrape.ts or properties.ts — scrape.ts adds and refreshes, properties.ts edits what you own and deletes. Never edit data.js by hand. Both write atomically, and the map may be open at the time.
• scraped is the listing's; mine is the user's. You cannot set a scraped field — those only come from a scrape, so their timestamp stays honest.
• Never invent a value. If the scrape did not find the price, it is null. Say you could not find it.
• A property with no coordinates still gets saved; the map lists it under "not on the map" rather than dropping it.

Checking your own work

sh

cd /workspace/host/skills/property-hunt/scripts && node --test *.test.ts