Refreshing a Grid from two different scenarios

I have an interface that gets data via an integration and then filters those results:

  local!caseCommentsResult: rule!UWM_Get_Case_Comments(caseId: ri!caseId),
  local!caseComments: local!caseCommentsResult.result.body,
  local!filteredActivities: a!forEach(
    items: local!caseComments,
    expression: if(
      tostring(fv!item.commentType) = "CASE_NOTE",
      fv!item,
      null
    )
  ),

And it is displayed in a grid:

a!columnLayout(
        contents: {
          a!localVariables(
            local!pageSize: 25,
            {
              a!gridField_23r3(
                emptyGridMessage: "No comments available",
                data: local!filteredNonNullActivities,

I want the grid to refresh on two different scenarios - 
1.  on RECORD_ACTION  (adding a new row)
2.  when a row is edited by direct integration call

I've tried various different scenarios of local variables but cannot figure out how to get the refresh to work with both these scenarios, especially since something like this

local!isCommentAdded: a!refreshVariable(
value: true,
refreshAfter: "RECORD_ACTION"
),

Always sets the value to true, there is no actual change in value of that variable to work with.

Here is my best attempt -

  local!editCompleted : false,
  local!isCommentUpdated: a!refreshVariable(
    value: local!editCompleted,
    refreshOnReferencedVarChange: local!editCompleted
  ),
  local!isCommentAdded: a!refreshVariable(
    value: true,
    refreshAfter: "RECORD_ACTION"
  ),
  local!isRefreshNeeded: if(
    or(
      local!isCommentUpdated,
      local!isCommentAdded
    ),
    true,
    false
  ),
  
    local!caseCommentsResult: a!refreshVariable(
    value: rule!UWM_Get_Case_Comments(caseId: ri!caseId),
    refreshOnReferencedVarChange: local!isRefreshNeeded
  ),

But because "isCommentAdded" is always true there is no change for caseCommentsResult to act upon.