Cool. Want a job at craigslist? (I work on search there.)

Is craigslist officially okay with this kind of app? Prior attempts to automate, with varying degrees of aggregation/automation, have been shut down (see: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...). The "SMS coming soon for $3.99" seems like it would not fly.

I am not a lawyer but I know where the TOS lives: http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use

From what I understand, Craigslist is cool with client-side automation (look at numerous Android and iPhone apps that query Craigslist).

I'm also working on a Chrome and Firefox extension which uses Craigslist as a data source, and this is my understanding as well

I think that rich client-side js apps packaged as browser extensions offer some interesting opportunities in general - being able to behave more like a normal client, instead of a giant aggregation host, allowing you to avoid angering services like Craigslist, being able to ask the user for permissions for increased localstorage limits (the default in most browsers is a measly 5mb) and the ability to do cross-domain ajax requests, etc.

It would be awesome, but I live in Seattle and don't want to move :(

Understood. It can't hurt to ask.

If this thing does anything to de-dupe, it would be a must-have, would-pay-for-it app.

Trying to use Craigslist to find a new apartment means sifting through the same listings, posted day after day after day. They lower the signal/noise ratio a great deal.

Interesting idea. Are these posts are exactly the same or do they have different title/message?

You should charge money for the more advanced features (eg: auto email)