Congress Trades Tracker

Set these in your shell profile, .env file, or cron environment. Never hard-code API keys in the script.

Setup

1. Install Python dependency

pip install requests

2. Set your API key

export QUIVER_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"

3. Schedule with user cron (no sudo needed)

Add your env vars to ~/.profile or a .env file sourced by your shell, then add the cron entry:

crontab -e
# Add this line (uses env vars from your profile):
* * * * * . "$HOME/.profile" && /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/scripts/scraper.py >> /path/to/logs/scraper.log 2>&1

Never inline API keys directly in crontab entries.

4. Set up OpenClaw alert pickup

Add to your HEARTBEAT.md:

## Check for congress trade alerts
- Read `congress_trades/data/pending_congress_alert.txt` — if it has content, send the alert to the user, then delete the file.

Or create an OpenClaw cron job (every 5 min) to check and forward alerts.

How It Works

1. Scraper runs every minute, fetches latest 200 trades from api.quiverquant.com
2. Inserts into local SQLite with unique trade_key deduplication
3. First run initializes DB and reports newest trade
4. Subsequent runs detect new trades, filter to buys/sells above threshold
5. Writes formatted alert to data/pending_congress_alert.txt for OpenClaw pickup
6. Keeps last 50 alerts in data/new_trades.json

Network and Data

• Only outbound connection: api.quiverquant.com (Quiver Quant API)
• Storage: local SQLite file + JSON alert files in data/
• No external endpoints besides the Quiver API
• Restrict file permissions on data directory (chmod 700 data/)

Alert Format

🏛️ 3 new congress trade(s) detected:

🟢 PURCHASE: Nancy Pelosi (D) [Rep]
   $NVDA — $1,000,001 - $5,000,000
   Trade: 2026-02-10 | Reported: 2026-02-14

🔴 SALE: Dan Crenshaw (R) [Rep]
   $MSFT — $15,001 - $50,000
   Trade: 2026-02-09 | Reported: 2026-02-14

Customization

• MIN_TRADE_AMOUNT: raise/lower via env var to change alert threshold
• Fetch limit: change limit=200 in fetch_trades() for broader sweeps
• Cron frequency: reduce to every 5 or 15 minutes if you prefer less polling