Watch fee market

Watch the Chia fee market

You are watching chia-explorer's fee estimator and notifying when recommended fees drop below a threshold the user can live with. Useful for batching low-priority spends.

This skill follows the conventions in this repo's SKILLS.md. Read that if anything below is unclear.

Required capabilities

• chia-explorer (mcp__chia-explorer__*) — mandatory.
• A notification MCP — pick whichever is installed. Fall back to ~/.chia-skills/alerts/ if none.

Resolve inputs

You need: $max_fee_mojos, $target_minutes, $spend_type, $channel.

• $max_fee_mojos — alert when the recommended fee for the target inclusion window is at or below this many mojos. Required. (1 XCH = 1,000,000,000,000 mojos, so 1,000,000 mojos = 0.000001 XCH, a typical "cheap" fee.)
• $target_minutes — inclusion window: 1, 5, or 15 minutes. Default 5.
• $spend_type — bias the estimate for a specific spend kind: xch, cat, nft, offer, or auto (default).
• $channel — notification channel, default auto.

Resolve: arguments → context → ask user.

If the user describes the threshold in XCH or USD, convert to mojos before validating. Tell them the conversion in the confirmation.

Load or initialise state

State file: ~/.chia-skills/state/watch-fee-market__<target_minutes>m_<spend_type>.json.

Shape:

{
  "max_fee_mojos": 1000000,
  "target_minutes": 5,
  "spend_type": "auto",
  "last_recommended_mojos": 5000000,
  "last_check_iso": "2026-05-19T14:33:00Z",
  "last_alerted_at": null
}

On first run: fetch current recommended fee, record it, write state, emit STATUS: success, EVENTS: 0. Don't fire an alert even if the current fee already satisfies the condition.

Check the fee

Call chia-explorer's estimate_fee for target_minutes = $target_minutes and spend_type = $spend_type.

Extract the recommended mojo fee for the target window.

Decide whether to alert

Alert if both:

• last_recommended_mojos > $max_fee_mojos AND
• current_recommended_mojos <= $max_fee_mojos

(That is: fees just dropped through the threshold from above.)

Debounce: if last_alerted_at is within the last 30 minutes, suppress. Fee market is noisier than price; tighter debounce.

Compose the notification

Chia fees dropped — cheap window for $spend_type spends

  Recommended fee (5-min inclusion):  500,000 mojos (0.0000005 XCH)
  Your threshold:                     1,000,000 mojos (0.000001 XCH)
  Previously:                         5,000,000 mojos

  Good window to broadcast queued transactions. Open your wallet to send.

Don't sign anything. Just notify.

Send the notification

Pick a channel by priority. Fall back to inline file.

Update state

Update last_recommended_mojos, last_check_iso, and (if alert fired) last_alerted_at. Write state atomically.

Scheduling

This skill is one-shot. Wire to:

• schedule skill / cron — every 2-5 minutes. The fee market moves block-by-block.
• /loop — for short focused waits.

Hard rules

• No retroactive alerts on first run.
• Debounce 30 minutes.
• Display mojos and XCH together in every message. Mojos are the canonical unit but XCH is what humans budget in.

Recovery patterns

• chia-explorer call fails. Don't update state. Emit STATUS: failed.
• Estimate returns 0 mojos. That's the genuine "mempool is empty, any fee works" signal — still alert (it's the cheapest possible window).

Output

STATUS: success | no_change | partial | failed | aborted
ALERTED: true | false
RECOMMENDED_MOJOS: <int>
RECOMMENDED_XCH: <decimal>
THRESHOLD_MOJOS: <int>
TARGET_MINUTES: <1|5|15>
CHANNEL: <channel used> | inline | none
ARTIFACT: <path to inline alert file> | none
REASON: <one line, only when STATUS is failed, partial, or aborted, or when no_change is due to debounce>