Build Log

Four more economic bets

October 3, 2026

Four candidate transactions assassinated on evidence; one federal-contracts Actor live on Apify, three killed.

ExperimentsApifyEconomic BetsResearchSmithV2

candidate transactions assassinated to a decision

Actor published and monetized (#4 federal opportunities)

candidates killed on Apify Store evidence (#2, #3, #5)

unit tests, all passing

3 / 3

opportunities returned / charged in the final platform billing check

Timeline

Oct 3

Charge + pre-build council

Council (customer/competitor/operator) printed verbatim; Zeb locked the charge with 7 corrections (no pre-selection, no moat requirement, residue elevated)

Oct 3

#4 RFP finder SURVIVES

~35 SAM.gov Actors, thin demand (leader 23/30d); official daily extract is permitted, keyless, 8 s to parse; 30% of open notices are duplicate amendments

Oct 3

#2 and #3 KILLED

Pricing monitors and tech-stack change monitors: months-old listings with 2-5 users ever

Oct 3

Build + independent audit

Audit found a real double charge (hyphenated Sol#) and invented deadline times; both fixed and re-verified on 4,959 live rows

Oct 3

Publish

apify push, Zeb priced and published; billing check caught the pre-filled default-item price again; fixed and re-checked

Oct 3

#5 reopened, then KILLED

Store/MCP search is keyword-only and routes current-info questions to rag-web-browser; credible agent-positioned neighbors unadopted for 3-4 months

What shipped

experiments/economic-bets-2026-10/ASSASSINATIONS.md — decision record for candidates #2-#5 with Apify Store API evidence, rights, economics, residue, and the #5 re-review

experiments/federal-opportunities-actor/src/csv.js — streaming RFC-4180 CSV parser (quotes, embedded newlines, CRLF, chunk boundaries)

experiments/federal-opportunities-actor/src/opportunities.js — latest-notice-per-solicitation collapse (alphanumeric Sol# + agency, deterministic ties), conservative open/closed decision for all four real deadline shapes, keyword/NAICS/state/set-aside/recency filters, fixed output contract

experiments/federal-opportunities-actor/src/main.js — official SAM.gov extract download, freshness check (>72 h = free source_stale), header and malformed-row format checks, pay-per-event opportunity charging, free explanation rows, monetization self-check, RUN_SUMMARY

experiments/federal-opportunities-actor/test/ — 17 node:test tests including a real-header fixture captured 2026-10-03 and audit regressions

experiments/federal-opportunities-actor/.actor/ — actor.json, input/dataset/output schemas; README.md (Store listing); EXPERIMENT.md (measurement, kill date 2026-12-02, launch facts)

CLAUDE.md — experiments table row for experiments/federal-opportunities-actor/