@thrrgilag I'll preface this by saying I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm considering having 2 files and comparing my 'recent' mentions with my 'live' mentions and using that as a trigger. This is something I'm sure you'll have thought of and dismissed as inefficient, inelegant. :)
I'm using https://api.10centuries.org/content/blurbs/mentions for now, until I can learn more Python.