I built a tool so i could stop refreshing Steamworks: Steam WishList Pulse
Indie devs keep refreshing Steam wishlist stats. I built Wishlist Pulse to track changes, detect anomalies, and send alerts, no more checking Steamworks manually.
While working on my first Steam game, I noticed I kept doing the same thing over and over: opening Steamworks, going to Wishlist Reporting, refreshing, closing it… then opening it again a few minutes later...
Not because anything had changed but because it might have.
It usually happened after anything related to the game. A tweet. A trailer. A Reddit post. Some small moment where there was a chance, however tiny, that wishlists moved.
Once I noticed it, I couldn’t unsee it.
You see the same pattern everywhere: Reddit threads, Twitter replies, devlogs. People refreshing their wishlist stats trying to catch movement, especially during big moments like Next Fest or after something gets traction.
The problem is, Steam wishlist data doesn’t even update in real time. It updates a few times per day, at unpredictable times.
At some point I realized the problem wasn’t that I needed to check Steamworks more often.
I just didn’t want to check it at all.
I wanted something that would sit in the background and tell me when something changes, and otherwise stay quiet.
So I built a small tool that polls Valve’s Wishlist Reporting API and notifies me whenever there’s movement.
Wishlist Pulse is a self-hosted tool that monitors your Steam wishlist data using Valve’s Wishlist Reporting API.
It polls the API at a configurable interval, compares each snapshot with the previous one, and detects changes in:
- wishlist adds
- deletes
- purchases
- gifts
When something changes, it sends notifications to Telegram and/or Discord with the exact deltas.
It stores all historical data locally in SQLite, so you can track trends and wishlist velocity over time.
It also includes anomaly detection based on a modified z-score (median + MAD), which flags unusual spikes or drops compared to recent history. You can choose to receive notifications for every update or only for anomalies.
The tool runs as a single binary with an embedded web dashboard for configuration, game management, and data visualization.
It supports tracking multiple games from one instance and works on Windows, macOS, Linux, and ARM devices like Raspberry Pi.
You can find it on Github.
hortopanThis whole thing came out of working on my first Steam game, Fleet Hunters.
It’s a small multiplayer strategy game with simultaneous turns — both players act at the same time, so you’re always trying to predict what the other person will do rather than react to it.
If you’re curious, you can take a look on Steam, wishlists are appreciated!
