Introduction: What Is This Project?
Narrativva Status Checker is an open-source web tool for monitoring the availability of websites and applications. Originally developed as an internal tool for Narrativva and Narrativva Labs, it’s now available to anyone who needs a simple, reliable status dashboard—without registration or user tracking.
The motivation was straightforward: get a clear, instant view of whether our sites are online, receive notifications about downtime, and avoid the complexity of larger monitoring systems.
The Idea: How Did It Start?
The project started because we needed:
- A visual overview of current uptime for multiple URLs.
- Automated incident notifications (via Discord).
- A tool that could be set up and used with minimal effort.
- Public status boards, no login required.
We didn’t spend much time researching other solutions; we just wanted to build something that would fit our own needs and be fully under our control.
How It Works
The workflow is simple and focused:
1. Add Websites or Apps
Users can add up to 10 URLs per account, with an optional label.
2. Automated Checks
The backend checks each monitored URL every 15 minutes. Results are aggregated daily (in both UTC and Central European time). The dashboard displays both current and 30-day historical status for each project (green = online, gray = offline or missing data, red = down for more than 12 hours, orange = down for less than 12 hours).
3. Discord Alerts (Optional)
Users can set up a Discord webhook to receive incident notifications when a site goes down or comes back up.
4. Dashboard
All monitored sites are shown in a minimalist, mobile-friendly dashboard. Public pages are viewable without login.
5. Privacy
No analytics, no cookies, no unnecessary data. Only the minimum information required to display the status is stored.
UX / UI
- Frontend: Built with Flutter (Dart), works as a web app, PWA installable. Not fully optimized for mobile—we currently disallow sign-in on mobile, and the page design isn’t perfect for smaller screens, but it’s usable in a pinch.
- Theme: Light and dark mode.
- Login: Only required for adding or editing monitored URLs (magic link, no passwords).
- Public Access: Status board is always viewable without an account.
- Notifications: Optional Discord integration.
Technical Details & Stack
Estimated costs:
Practically zero for small teams—free on Netlify and Supabase’s free tiers. No expensive APIs required.
Target group:
Freelancers, indie makers, small teams, agencies, and anyone who wants live monitoring without fuss.
Main technologies:
- Frontend: Flutter 3.x (web, PWA-ready)
- Backend: Supabase (Postgres DB, Edge Functions, scheduled crons)
- Hosting: Netlify
- Notifications: Discord webhook integration
- Database: Stores URLs, check logs, and daily status records
- Open-source: MIT License
Operational costs are minimal, and the setup is intentionally simple.
Experimental Parameters & Development Notes
- Checks run automatically every 15 minutes.
- Daily aggregation supports both UTC and Europe/Prague time zones.
- Each user can monitor up to 10 sites.
- Time zone switching is available in the UI.
Development stories:
- We currently monitor four of our own sites; so far, no significant incidents.
- In early development, we accidentally deleted UTC data before generating Prague data, causing all statuses to show as gray (missing data).
- Magic link login sometimes pointed to the wrong environment during local development, which required some debugging.
The Result: How Does It Work in Practice?
- Add your sites (up to 10 per user).
- Status is checked and updated every 15 minutes.
- Discord alerts notify you about incidents (if configured).
- Public status board is always available; login is only required to manage your own projects.
The system is stable and requires minimal maintenance.
What We Learned & What’s Next?
Findings
- For small teams and individual projects, simple uptime monitoring is usually enough.
- Time zones and daily data aggregation are more complex in practice than they seem.
- Flutter web with Supabase allows for quick prototyping and a fast UI, but there’s still room for improvement—especially for mobile users.
- We use OpenAI Codex for development, which has helped a lot; we’ll definitely use it for our next project.
- No outages yet, so we’re waiting to see real-world incident handling.
Improvements Planned (maybe…)
- Add more analytics and graphing features.
- Improve mobile-first design.
- Allow users to select and monitor additional time zones.
Links & Resources
Summary:
Narrativva Status Checker is a lightweight, open-source solution for basic uptime monitoring. Public status is always accessible—no registration needed. Use it if you want a simple dashboard for your own or client projects, with no tracking and no unnecessary features.
