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FUTURE-004: Twitter/X Real-Time Data

Status: Idea (not started) Priority: Medium-High (high value, high cost) Effort: Medium Cost: High ($100+/month for useful access)

Problem

Breaking news appears on Twitter/X before it's indexed by Exa or traditional news sources. This latency gap represents information arbitrage opportunity.

For time-sensitive markets (politics, breaking events), Twitter is often the first signal.

Proposed Solution

Add a Twitter/X data provider that:

  1. Monitors key accounts for breaking news
  2. Filters by relevant keywords/topics
  3. Surfaces tweets that may affect tracked markets

MVP Scope

# Track tweets from key accounts relevant to a market
kalshi twitter track <TICKER> --accounts @user1,@user2

# Collect recent tweets for tracked markets
kalshi twitter collect --hours 24

# Show tweets relevant to a thesis
kalshi twitter context <THESIS_ID>

Cost Analysis

Tier Price Features
Twitter API Basic $100/mo 10k tweets/mo read, limited search
Twitter API Pro $5000/mo Full archive search, higher limits
Third-party (e.g., SocialData.tools) $50-200/mo Varies, often better value

Recommendation: Start with a third-party aggregator or defer until manual validation confirms value.

Why Medium-High Priority

Pros: - Real-time breaking news - Key person monitoring (insiders, officials) - Sentiment signal

Cons: - Expensive - Noisy (requires filtering) - Rate limits - API stability concerns (X policy changes)

Implementation Notes

  • Consider third-party APIs: SocialData, Apify, RapidAPI aggregators
  • Need curated list of accounts per market category
  • Keyword filtering essential to reduce noise
  • May integrate with existing Exa research flow

Dependencies

  • ResearchProvider interface (SPEC-033) for clean integration

Validation Strategy

Before building: 1. Manually monitor Twitter for 2 weeks during active trading 2. Log instances where Twitter gave signal before other sources 3. Quantify the latency advantage

Open Questions

  • Which third-party provider offers best value?
  • How to curate key accounts per category (politics, crypto, sports)?
  • Store tweets in DB or ephemeral?

Acceptance Criteria

To be defined when promoted to spec.