The owner could not tell from the UI what "Buzz Price Tracking" enabled, what the
"Price alert threshold" number meant, or what "Price Alerts" was alerting about.
That was not a copy problem: the implementation exposed our mechanism (a page
scrape) and our SQL predicates as the user's concepts. Two concrete defects came
from the same root:
- the alert population included versions the user already owns (neither the event
generator nor the query filtered on is_in_library; in the owner's library 28 of
52 gated versions were already downloaded, so most "alerts" were about files
already on disk, which cannot become cheaper *for them*);
- a threshold-filtered state list lived in a notification surface, so an empty
panel had three indistinguishable causes and read as a broken feature.
The information model is now the version plus ownership: cost is shown only where
a decision exists. Owned -> nothing. Not owned and free -> nothing. Not owned and
gated -> the price when it is known, `Paid` without a number when it is not, and
early access keeps its countdown because "free on <date>" decides between waiting
and paying. The numeric threshold has no place in that model: every decision is
categorical (wait / pay / skip), so the setting, the comparison and the whole
alert-state machine are gone.
- both alert-state columns are removed from the schema rather than left dead; a
database created by an unreleased build has them dropped on open (native
ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN, guarded), which is a no-op for everyone else
- gate events are emitted only for versions the user does not have, and the
price-drop event goes with the threshold it belonged to
- both alert endpoints, PriceAlertsHandler and the service-registry adapter field
it needed are removed: events already reach the UI through the refresh response
- the bell tab, panel, CSS, both entry points, the unread watermark and their
locales are removed; the setting keeps only the enable flag and the refresh
interval and is framed as plumbing
- "Price unavailable" is replaced by `Paid`: the gate is certain from the public
API, only the number is best-effort, and that is our plumbing, not the user's
problem
Verified against a copy of the owner's real database: 52 gated versions ->
28 owned (now silent) + 24 the feature is actually about; the drop migration ran
and both removed endpoints 404.
CivitAI's public API deliberately omits prices — paidAccess is trimmed to
{permanent, endsAt} because "pricing belongs to the purchase flow" — but the
public model page embeds the site's own model.getById result, including
paidAccess.terms, in its server-rendered payload. That is read anonymously
(no API key, no internal endpoint, no forged Origin), one request per gated
model, so only the ~2% of models that actually carry a gate pay for it.
- optional capture, off by default: price_tracking_enabled,
price_alert_threshold_buzz (0 = alert on "became free" only) and
price_check_ttl_hours; prices refresh on their own TTL and immediately when a
gate changes, and a failed fetch keeps the stored price instead of blanking it
- versions that stop carrying a gate are marked free (persisted gate_lapsed_at)
and gate transitions are reported as events on the refresh response, so a
version already in the library can announce that it became free
- price_alert_state plus a price_drop edge event; new
GET /api/lm/{type}/updates/price-alerts lists what is under the threshold
- versions tab shows the price (effective, with the list price struck through
and a Blue Buzz note) and a Free Now badge; an update check toasts the
transitions in one message
- the parser and the alerts query are unit-tested against a trimmed page
fixture, and every route definition is now asserted to resolve to a handler
Plan, verification notes and the deviations from it are in
docs/plans/paid-model-price-tracking.md.
- Add disabled and loading states for control group buttons with appropriate cursor and opacity styling
- Enhance dropdown toggle active state styling for update filter group
- Improve dropdown toggle layout with flex centering
- Add disabled state styling for dropdown items
- Refactor model update check to use shared helper function, removing redundant success handling and simplifying error flow
- Maintain existing functionality while improving user experience and code maintainability
Will Miao