In progress · Built for a friend

Federal Contract Opportunity Monitor

A $0-to-run scheduled job that checks the federal contract feed every hour and alerts only when a posting is genuinely new.

  • Python
  • GitHub Actions
  • REST APIs
  • Git

Overview

What it does and why

A friend starting a small contracting business needed to see relevant federal postings the day they went up. The commercial tools that do this run $2,000 to $15,000 a year, so I built the free version: a Python job on GitHub Actions that checks the SAM.gov feed hourly and alerts only on postings worth a look.

The whole design follows from two constraints: a 1,000-request daily API limit, and no server or database to remember anything between runs.

Technologies

And why each one
Python
One lightweight script handles fetching, filtering, scoring, and alerting.
GitHub Actions
Free scheduled compute. A cron trigger runs the job hourly with nothing to host.
REST APIs
The SAM.gov Get Opportunities API is the data source, rate limit included.
Git
The database. Fingerprints of seen postings are committed back to the repo between runs.

How it works

  1. 01

    Filter in cost order

    Free checks run first: query constraints, keyword gating, then deduplication. Only records that survive all three cost an API request, which cuts calls about 90 percent.

  2. 02

    Remember without a database

    Each posting is hashed with SHA-256 and the hashes are committed to the repo, so nothing is ever reported twice.

  3. 03

    Rank, not just match

    Qualifying postings get a weighted 0-100 score across specificity, eligibility, and deadline, so the strongest lead is always on top.

Context

Background reading

Curious about the details? I'm happy to walk through any of it.

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The source for this project lives in a private repository and is available on request.