# General Chemical Pricing

> Retrieves averaged elemental prices and provides direct vendor purchase links for elements and precursor compounds.

- Skill: `learningmatter-mit/general-chemical-pricing` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add learningmatter-mit/general-chemical-pricing`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/learningmatter-mit/general-chemical-pricing/raw
- Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS)
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: learningmatter-mit (https://skillmd.com/u/learningmatter-mit)
- Updated: 2026-09-22
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/learningmatter-mit/general-chemical-pricing

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# General Chemical Pricing

## Goal
To programmatically query averaged bulk commodity prices for pure chemical elements (in USD/kg) and to retrieve direct chemical vendor links for ordering specific precursor compounds or elemental forms.

## Instructions

### 1. Get Pricing and Vendor Links
Use this script to search for the pricing details of a given element or chemical compound. The script aggregates Wikipedia's USGS elemental data with PubChem's registered supplier vendor lists.

```bash
# Env: base-agent
python .agents/skills/general-chemical-pricing/scripts/get_pricing.py <Query Name or Symbol>
```

**Parameters:**
* `<Query Name or Symbol>`: The name, symbol, or full compound name (e.g., "Lithium", "Li", "Lithium carbonate", "Li2CO3"). Ensure multi-word compounds are wrapped in quotes (e.g., `"Lithium carbonate"`).

## Examples
See [examples/lithium-carbonate/README.md](examples/lithium-carbonate/README.md) for a complete run of querying elemental lithium alongside a molecular precursor.

## Constraints
- **Environments**: The script requires the **`base-agent`** Conda environment because it uses standard requests, beautifulsoup4, and pubchempy libraries. **Each code block MUST specify the environment.**
- **Price Precision**: Elemental bulk prices presented are averaged and highly dependent on market fluctuations and the reference year (scraped dynamically from Wikipedia's USGS Mineral Commodity list).
- **Vendor Links**: For compounds, live price points are not freely accessible via unauthenticated APIs. The skill provides a robust PubChem URL that aggregates active supplier links where live pricing can be interactively observed.

## References
- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries (via Wikipedia). [Prices of chemical elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements)
- PubChem PUG REST API for retrieving CIDs. [PubChem API](https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/docs/pug-rest)

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**Author:** Bowen Deng
**Contact:** [GitHub @learningmatter-mit](https://github.com/learningmatter-mit)