# Co Star Real Estate Scraper

> Scrapes publicly accessible pages from CoStar News GB and

- Skill: `hayderhekmat/co-star-real-estate-scraper` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 7 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add hayderhekmat/co-star-real-estate-scraper`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/hayderhekmat/co-star-real-estate-scraper/raw
- Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector CAUTION)
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- License: NOASSERTION
- Author: HayderHekmat (https://skillmd.com/u/hayderhekmat)
- Updated: 2026-09-22
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/hayderhekmat/co-star-real-estate-scraper

---

# Co-Star Real Estate Scraper

Skill package: `co_star_real_estate_scraper`

## What This Skill Does

Scrapes publicly accessible pages from CoStar News GB and extracts article, property, and market signals when available.

This skill is Hermes-ready and designed for Hermes Agent skill workflows. It is also compatible with skill-style agent systems that read markdown instructions, a manifest, and a JSON input schema.

## When To Use It

- CoStar Real Estate Scraper
- Collect sale, acquisition, financing, refinancing and letting stories.
- Monitor public news about developers, landlords, investors, occupiers and agents.
- Build commercial real estate research datasets from public CoStar articles.
- Export extracted property, transaction, media and company data to BI tools, CRMs, spreadsheets, dashboards or enrichment pipelines.
- Automate recurring monitoring of new CoStar property news for market monitoring, lead generation, investment research and deal tracking.

## Inputs Expected From Normal Users

- `startUrls` (array) - Public CoStar listing or section pages to seed the crawl.
- `maxItems` (integer) - Maximum number of records to store in the dataset.
- Advanced, internal, and cost-sensitive fields remain available in `input_schema.json`, but the agent should not ask about them by default.

## Output Expected

The workflow returns an array of records from the Actor's default Dataset.

Common record fields:

- Each returned record contains the fields provided by the source Actor.

## Step-By-Step Workflow

1. Read the user's goal and map it to one of the detected capabilities.
2. Validate required inputs against `input_schema.json`.
3. Ask for missing required values before making any external call or Actor run.
4. Execute the documented API, repository tool, or Apify Actor workflow described by the source.
5. Return a concise summary, structured result data, and any relevant links or dataset references.
6. For long-running work, report progress and preserve enough context for retry.

## How This Skill Calls The Apify Actor

- Actor slug: `solutionssmart/co-star-real-estate-scraper`
- Required secret: `APIFY_TOKEN`
- Start run endpoint: `https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/solutionssmart~co-star-real-estate-scraper/runs`
- Run-sync endpoint: `https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/solutionssmart~co-star-real-estate-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items`
- Expected result: dataset items from the default dataset
- Input schema source: `apify_actor_metadata`
- Readiness level: `executable`

## Before Running

- Verify `APIFY_TOKEN` exists in the agent secret store.
- Validate user input against `input_schema.json`.
- Use the run-sync endpoint for small jobs.
- Use the async run endpoint for larger jobs and then fetch dataset items.


## Required And Conditional Inputs

Always-required fields:

- No always-required fields were confirmed.

Conditional requirements depend on the selected mode, action, operation, or task:

- No high-confidence conditional requirements were inferred.


## Field Guidance For Agents

By default, the agent should only ask about agentDefaultFields. Advanced fields should be used only when the user explicitly requests expert control.

### Default Workflow

- Default mode: `not inferred`
- Ask first: `startUrls`, `maxItems`

### Ask The User First

`startUrls`, `maxItems`

### Conditional-Only Fields

none

These fields are valid and user-facing, but they should not be requested by default. Ask for them only when the user selects a mode, action, or operation that requires them.

Apply `conditionalRequirements` before asking for these fields.

### Ask Only If Needed

`maxConcurrency`, `desiredConcurrency`, `proxyConfiguration`, `proxyInitializationTimeoutSecs`, `fallbackToNoProxyOnProxyError`

These are technical or expert options. Use them only when the user asks for advanced behavior or operational tuning.

### Do Not Ask Normal Users

none

These are billing, debug, storage, telemetry, or internal fields. Normal users should not be asked about them.

### Cost-Sensitive Fields

`maxItems`, `maxRequestsPerCrawl`, `maxConcurrency`, `desiredConcurrency`, `maxPaginationPages`, `proxyConfiguration`, `proxyInitializationTimeoutSecs`, `fallbackToNoProxyOnProxyError`

These can increase runtime, compute, memory use, scraping depth, or external requests. Warn the user before enabling or increasing them.


## Cost-Safe Execution

- Risk level: `high`
- Recommended test input:

```json
{
  "maxItems": 5
}
```

- Safe defaults:

```json
{
  "maxItems": 5
}
```

- High-cost fields: `maxItems`, `maxRequestsPerCrawl`, `maxConcurrency`, `desiredConcurrency`, `maxPaginationPages`, `proxyConfiguration`, `proxyInitializationTimeoutSecs`, `fallbackToNoProxyOnProxyError`

Agent guidance:

- Start with a small maxPlaces, maxItems, or maxResults value for test runs.
- Disable review scraping unless explicitly requested.
- Disable website enrichment for first validation runs.
- Use async runs for large jobs.


## Error Handling

- If an input is missing or ambiguous, ask a targeted follow-up question.
- If the source API or Actor returns a validation error, explain the failing field and suggest a corrected input.
- If rate limits or transient network errors occur, retry once with backoff and then report the failure clearly.
- If the source documentation is incomplete, state the assumption and keep raw response details visible.

## Safety And Rate-Limit Notes

- Respect the terms, robots policies, and rate limits of the source service.
- Do not expose API keys, Apify tokens, or personal data in logs or final answers.
- Prefer small test runs before large scraping or API jobs.
- Avoid browser rendering unless the workflow explicitly requires it.

## Example User Commands

- "Use `co_star_real_estate_scraper` to run the default workflow for this source."
- "Generate a request for `co_star_real_estate_scraper` using these parameters: ..."
- "Validate this `co_star_real_estate_scraper` input before running it."
- "Retry the failed `co_star_real_estate_scraper` operation and explain what changed."

## Integration Notes For Hermes Agent

Copy this folder into `~/.hermes/skills/<category>/co_star_real_estate_scraper/` or install it with `hermes skills install <url>`. Keep `SKILL.md`, `manifest.json`, and `input_schema.json` together so the agent can load the instructions and validate user input.