# Capitoltrades Politician Tracker > Scrape a politician's stock trading disclosures from CapitolTrades.com and report which trades are newly disclosed since the last check. Use this whenever the user wants to track, monitor, or check a member of Congress's stock trades — phrases like "what is [politician] trading", "track [senator/rep]'s trades", "check CapitolTrades for X", "any new disclosures from [politician]", or when given a capitoltrades.com/politicians/ID URL. Also use this to set up a recurring daily/weekly trade-tracking routine for a politician (pair with the `schedule` skill). Works for any politician on CapitolTrades, not just one specific person. - Skill: `samin12/capitoltrades-politician-tracker` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add samin12/capitoltrades-politician-tracker` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/samin12/capitoltrades-politician-tracker/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Docs & Writing - Author: Samin12 (https://skillmd.com/u/samin12) - Updated: 2026-09-22 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/samin12/capitoltrades-politician-tracker --- # CapitolTrades Politician Tracker Members of Congress must disclose stock trades under the STOCK Act, usually filed 15-45 days after the trade date. CapitolTrades.com aggregates these disclosures per politician. This skill scrapes a politician's page and reports only what's **new** since the last check, so repeated runs (especially scheduled ones) don't re-report the same trades every time. ## When you don't have a politician ID yet CapitolTrades URLs look like `https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians/` where `` is CapitolTrades' own code (e.g. `K000389` for Ro Khanna — this happens to look like a bioguide ID but treat it as an opaque CapitolTrades identifier). If the user gives a name instead of a URL: 1. Try `firecrawl scrape "https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians?q=" --wait-for 3000 --only-main-content` and look for a matching profile link, or 2. Use the `firecrawl-search` skill to search `site:capitoltrades.com/politicians `. Once you have the URL, confirm the identity by checking the page's `

` name and party/chamber/state line (see "Identify the politician" below) before reporting anything — don't assume the ID matches the name the user said, since CapitolTrades IDs aren't mnemonic. ## Step 1: Scrape the page The page is a JS-rendered SPA — the trades table won't be in the initial HTML, so a render wait is required: ```bash firecrawl scrape "https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians/" --wait-for 3000 --only-main-content -o .firecrawl/capitoltrades-.md ``` If you need the politician's display name (e.g. for a first-time report or to confirm identity), scrape once without `--only-main-content` and with `-f markdown` to a `.json` path, or just grep the plain markdown output for the `# Name` heading near the top of the page — CapitolTrades renders the politician's name as an H1 followed by a `Party · Chamber · State` line. ## Step 2: Parse the trades table The scraped markdown contains a table shaped like: ``` | Traded Issuer | Published | Traded | Filed After | Type | Size | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | ### [Bank of Montreal](.../issuers/429991)
BMO:US | 09:05
Yesterday | 23 Jun
2026 | days
12 | buy | 15K–50K | [Goto trade detail page.](.../trades/20003800812) | ``` For each row extract: - **Issuer** — the link text before `
` - **Ticker** — the text after `
` (e.g. `BMO:US`) - **Traded date** — the "Traded" column - **Type** — buy or sell - **Size** — the dollar range - **Trade ID** — the numeric ID at the end of the trade detail URL (e.g. `20003800812`) — this is the unique key for diffing, NOT the issuer or date, since a politician can trade the same stock multiple times. Only the first page of results is needed for tracking new disclosures — CapitolTrades sorts by most-recently-published first, so anything new always appears on page 1. ## Step 3: Diff against saved state Maintain one state file per politician at `.firecrawl/state/capitoltrades--seen.json` (or, for a scheduled task, under that task's own storage directory) — a JSON array of trade IDs already reported: ```json ["20003800812", "20003800813", "..."] ``` - **First run (no state file yet):** treat every trade ID on page 1 as the baseline. Report them all as the initial snapshot, then write the state file. - **Later runs:** load the state file, diff the current page-1 trade IDs against it. Only IDs *not* in the saved list are "new." - **After reporting:** merge the new IDs into the saved list, and cap it at the most recent ~500 entries so the file doesn't grow unbounded. ## Step 4: Report If there are new trades, present them as a markdown table and lead with a one-line summary: > [Politician] disclosed N new trade(s) since the last check. | Issuer | Ticker | Trade Date | Type | Size | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | If nothing is new, just say so briefly — don't re-list old trades or pad the response: > No new [Politician] trades disclosed since the last check. Keep this concise. It's a diff notification, not a research report — resist the urge to add commentary, sector analysis, or speculation about *why* a trade was made unless the user asks for that separately. ## Setting up a recurring check If the user wants this to run automatically (daily, weekly, etc.), use the `schedule` skill to create a scheduled task. Give that task its own self-contained prompt including: the exact CapitolTrades URL, the politician's name, and the path to its state file — scheduled runs start fresh each time with no memory of this conversation, so the prompt must carry everything needed to repeat steps 1-4 above.