Iam 12 .I Built an Autonomous Bot to Hunt Phishing Scams on Dev.to (For $0) 🐯🛡️

A 12-year-old developer built Tiger Sentinel, an autonomous phishing-detection bot running as @watch_dog on Dev.to, using Python's requests library and GitHub Actions to scan recent articles' comments for a scam signature (tr.ee/dev-to) and post warnings at zero hosting cost. The bot adds human-like constraints, including a random 3-7 second delay and a check that it hasn't already replied to a given article, to avoid platform bans and infinite spam loops.

Hey DEV Community 👋 Recently, I noticed a nasty phishing bot namespamming the comment sections of popular posts with fake "Official Platform Update" links. It was targeting new developers and trying to steal credentials. I started manually flagging and replying to warn the community. But as a 12-year-old founder building a 142KB AI app on a $150 phone, I realized two things: So, I did what any constraint-driven engineer would do: I built an autonomous, cloud-native security bot to hunt it down for me. Meet Tiger Sentinel running as @watch dog . 🤖 I didn't want to pay for a VPS, and I didn't want to keep my phone awake. The solution? GitHub Actions . Here is the exact stack I used to build a 24/7 autonomous guardian for $0: requests library. It hits the Dev.to API, fetches the 3 most recent articles, scans the comments for the scam signature tr.ee/dev-to , and posts a warning if found. Building a bot that replies automatically is dangerous. If you reply too fast, the platform bans you. I had to engineer human-like constraints into the code: @watch dog has already replied to that specific article. This prevents infinite spam loops. time.sleep random.randint 3, 7 delay between fetching and posting to mimic human behavior and respect the API rate limits. Building Tiger Sentinel taught me a massive lesson about product development: Don't just build features; build solutions to real ecosystem problems. When you build tools that protect, empower, or save time for your community, you aren't just writing code. You are building trust. And trust is the ultimate distribution channel. While Tiger Sentinel guards the gates in the cloud, I am pivoting 100% of my energy into Pure Distribution for my main projects: If you're building on a budget, or just love seeing how a 12-year-old automates their life with Python and GitHub Actions, let me know in the comments Stay sharp, verify your links, and keep building. 🐯️