Six Days

Six days. That’s how much I missed adept.dev by.

I’d watched that domain for years — checked it idly, told myself I’d grab it the moment it lapsed. It dropped on October 10th, and a drop-catcher took it before I ever knew it was gone. It’s parked now, listed for sale by someone who has never typed the word adept with intent.

The frustrating part isn’t losing it. It’s that the information was free the whole time. Expiry dates are public. Status changes are public. pendingDelete is a flare shot into the sky, and I wasn’t looking up.

So I did the only reasonable thing: I built a watcher.

Domain Watcher runs a daily RDAP sweep over every name I care about — the ones I own and the ones I’m hunting. Expiry countdowns with threshold warnings. Alerts the moment anything moves: nameservers flipping to a parking service, a registrar change, a status going pendingDelete, a wishlist name suddenly coming free. The one event I need to act on in hours, not weeks, pings my phone directly.

It’s watching my own domains too. Losing a name you wanted stings; letting one you own lapse would be unforgivable.

The domain’s gone. The lesson wasn’t free. The tool almost is.