Food · Community report
Watch for a dinner table
Watch for a dinner table. Keep an eye on a hard-to-get reservation.
What you can get
Reaches your accounts Creates or changes things in accounts you connect, with your approval.
-
It does
- Watches the platform you name and alerts you
- Does not book, join a waitlist, or give a card to hold a table
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It stops and asks
- Before it starts: agree the check frequency and that it will not book.
- When a table appears: you are told, and you decide.
- Before confirming: read the deposit, cancellation and no-show terms yourself.
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You approve
- No authorization to book, to enter a card, or to accept cancellation terms
Derived from this task's own brief and steps, not from the source.
- Set the filterStops for your approval
Restaurant, platform, party size, dates and the window you would take.
- Agree the rulesStops for your approval
Check interval, end date, and that nothing is booked.
- Watch
Report matches and near-misses with timestamps.
- Book it yourselfStops for your approval
You confirm, having read the deposit and cancellation terms.
Editorial, not from the source
Works when
- You can act within a few minutes of an alert.
- The restaurant genuinely releases tables late, from cancellations or a fixed drop time.
- You are willing to accept a near-miss slot rather than only one exact time.
Does not work when
- You want the table booked automatically while you are unavailable.
- The venue's terms include a deposit or fee you have not read.
- You need the reservation guaranteed for a fixed occasion.
Watch for a dinner table: alert template
| Seen | Detail | Action |
|---|---|---|
| [Date and time] | [Party size, platform, timestamp] | [You book] |
| [Near-miss] | [Within 30 minutes of the window] | [Widen or ignore] |
| [Platform response] | [Normal / throttled / refusing] | [Continue or stop] |
The source case
Assistant Benchmark republishes eleven Instinct prompts posted on X by @gabenavarro. Number seven is a restaurant watch: watch a named restaurant for a table on Friday or Saturday and book anything between 8 and 9pm. The same page reports what can go wrong with that instruction — a diner charged a $200 cancellation fee for a booking he had not authorized, and a Resy account suspended after repeated reservation attempts. This page keeps the watching and drops the automatic booking.
A public report by someone outside this library. Not independently reproduced here.
From the source
Summary by a reviewer
Restaurant watch. "Watch [restaurant] for a table for [party size] Friday or Saturday and book anything between 8 and 9pm."
Quoted from the original posts. Not written by this guide, and not a result produced here.
Suggested prompt
Bring Restaurant and dates, Party size, The time window that works, The booking platform. Acts Watches the platform you name and alerts you. Does not book, join a waitlist, or give a card to hold a table. Source community report, checked 2026-09-18.
Written by this guide as a starting point, not quoted from the source. Your edits stay in this browser.
Other ways to ask
Editorial rewrites of the brief above, for a different emphasis. Copy them separately.
What you need
Editorial, not from the source
You supply
- Restaurant and dates
- Party size
- The time window that works
- The booking platform
Connected
- The reservation platform, read-only, at whatever rate it permits
How to try it
Editorial, not from the source
- Name the restaurant, the platform it books on, the party size, the dates and the exact time window that would actually work.
- Say what happens when a table appears: you want to be told. Booking on sight is where the reported charges came from.
- Set how often it may check, and for how many days it should keep going before stopping and asking.
- Book it yourself when the alert arrives, and read the cancellation and no-show terms on the way through.
Describe the table you would actually take
A watch is only as good as its filter. Name the restaurant and the platform it books on, because the same venue can list on several and availability differs between them. Give the party size as a hard constraint and the time window as the range you would genuinely accept: a watch set to a single minute will almost never fire, and one set to any evening will fire constantly. Say which dates are in play and whether a weekday would do. Cancellations at booked-out restaurants tend to surface at particular moments, often the day before or at a fixed release time, so it is worth saying when you can respond as well as when you can eat.
Alert, do not book
The prompt this page comes from ends with "book anything between 8 and 9pm". The same source page records what that can cost: a diner charged a $200 cancellation fee for a booking he had not authorized, and another user whose Resy account was temporarily suspended after the assistant made repeated reservation attempts. Neither is an argument against watching; both are arguments for the alert stopping at your phone. Restaurants worth watching are exactly the ones with deposits, card holds and no-show fees, and those terms are attached to your name and your card, not to the assistant's.
Stay inside what the platform tolerates
Reservation platforms are built to resist this, and they respond to frequent automated checking by throttling, blocking, or suspending the account doing it. Set an interval you can defend, give the watch an end date rather than letting it run forever, and stop it entirely at the first sign of refused requests. Keep a timestamp on every alert so you can tell a live opening from a stale page. If the platform offers its own notify-me or waitlist feature, that is usually the better instrument: it is sanctioned, it does not put the account at risk, and it fires from the venue's own system rather than from polling it.
Open Instinct to try it. That is the product's own site; this guide is not part of it.
Limits and confirmation points
- Reservation platforms rate-limit and ban. One reported user had a Resy account temporarily suspended after repeated automated attempts, and the account at risk is yours.
- A table seen is not a table held. Popular slots disappear in seconds, and an alert is a prompt to act, not a reservation.
- Automatic booking has a price: the same source reports a $200 cancellation fee after an unauthorized booking. Deposits, card holds and no-show fees are normal at the restaurants worth watching.
- This is a suggested prompt, not a result. It does not establish that a table will be found.
Editorial, not from the source
- Before it starts: agree the check frequency and that it will not book.
- When a table appears: you are told, and you decide.
- Before confirming: read the deposit, cancellation and no-show terms yourself.
Editorial, not from the source
- The table is gone by the time you open the alert
- Widen the window by fifteen minutes either side and accept that cancellations surface without warning; the alternative is authorizing a booking you have not seen.
- The platform starts refusing requests
- Stop the watch. Repeated automated attempts are what got one reported account suspended; slow the interval well below the platform's limit before resuming.
- Alerts arrive for the wrong party size
- Restate the party size as a hard filter, since many platforms show adjacent sizes by default.
Common questions
Why not let it book the table automatically?
Because the account, the card and the cancellation fee are yours. The source page reports a $200 charge after an unauthorized booking and an account suspended after repeated attempts. An alert costs you a minute and avoids both.
How often should it check?
Rarely enough that the platform does not notice. There is no universal number; start slow, watch for refused requests, and stop if they appear. A suspended account cannot book anything.
What should the alert contain?
The exact date, time and party size seen, the platform, and a timestamp. Without the timestamp you cannot tell a live opening from a page that was cached minutes ago.
Is a waitlist better than a watch?
Usually, where the platform offers one. It is sanctioned by the venue, it does not risk the account, and it fires from the restaurant's own system instead of from polling.
Will this get me the table?
No. It tells you when one appears. Whether it is still there when you click is outside anyone's control, which is why the window should be wider than a single time.
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