Watchtower is a terminal-based global intelligence dashboard designed to give a compact view of what is happening without requiring a browser.
It brings together global and local information in a keyboard-driven interface, with separate views for news, markets, local conditions and generated intelligence briefs. The project uses public data sources for most of its information and can be used without configuring an LLM. Its intelligence brief is optional and supports hosted providers as well as local models, so users can choose whether they want automated headline synthesis. Configuration is stored locally and the interface is built around quick navigation rather than a conventional desktop layout.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Global news sourced from more than 100 RSS feeds.
- Keyword-based threat classification using CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW and INFO levels.
- Live cryptocurrency information from CoinGecko.
- Prediction-market data from Polymarket.
- Stock and commodity information.
- Local news based on the user’s configured location.
- Weather information supplied by Open-Meteo.
- Optional intelligence summaries generated from leading headlines.
- Supports Groq, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Gemini, Anthropic and local models.
- Vim-style navigation as well as arrow-key controls.
- Keyboard shortcuts for switching views, scrolling and refreshing data.
- Initial setup asks for the LLM provider, API key, city and coordinates.
Website: github.com/lajosdeme/watchtower
Support:
Developer: Lajos Deme
License: MIT License

Watchtower is written in Go. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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