congress-trades

# Congress Trades Tracker

Monitor US congressional stock trades via Quiver Quant API, store in a local SQLite database, and alert on new significant trades. Requires Python `requests` library and a Quiver Quant API key.

## Requirements

- Python 3.10+ with `requests` (`pip install requests`)
- **QUIVER_API_KEY** environment variable (get a key at https://www.quiverquant.com/)

## Environment Variables

| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| QUIVER_API_KEY | **Yes** | — | Quiver Quant API token |
| CONGRESS_DB_PATH | No | data/congress_trades.db | SQLite database path |
| MIN_TRADE_AMOUNT | No | 15001 | Minimum trade amount to trigger alerts |

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

## Setup

### 1. Install Python dependency

```bash
pip install requests
```

### 2. Set your API key

```bash
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:

```bash
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`:

```markdown
## 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_congres...