Automated "Alpha" Research Agent
Setup time: 45 minutes | Weekly value: Hours of manual research eliminated
Scan the "hidden" web—job boards, local news, niche forums—for growth signals before Wall Street sees them.
The Architecture:
Trigger: Weekly scheduler
↓
Action 1: Firecrawl Crawl — Scout careers pages
↓
Action 2: Firecrawl Search — Local news mentions
↓
Action 3: n8n AI Agent — Score the signals
↓
Action 4: Telegram alert (if conviction > 8)
↓
Outcome: Early intelligence on small-cap catalysts
Step 1: Firecrawl Crawl (Job Board Scout)
Point Firecrawl at target company Careers pages. Extract new R&D and Sales postings.
{
"url": "https://[company].com/careers",
"formats": ["markdown"],
"extract": {
"schema": {
"job_title": "string",
"department": "string",
"location": "string",
"date_posted": "string"
},
"filter": "R&D OR Sales OR Engineering"
}
}
Signal: A $5 stock suddenly hiring 20 sales reps in a specific region likely just closed a massive, unannounced deal.
Step 2: Firecrawl Search (Local News Scraper)
Search for company mentions on local news sites near their facilities.
{
"query": "[Company Name] expansion OR permit OR construction",
"sites": ["local news domains near facilities"],
"format": "markdown"
}
Signal: Factory expansion stories and city council approvals hit local news weeks before official press releases.
Step 3: AI Reasoning Node
{
"prompt": "Compare these signals: New R&D hires, local expansion news, forum sentiment. Is this 'growth' or 'maintenance'? Conviction Score 1-10 with reasoning."
}
Step 4: Conditional Alert
{
"condition": "conviction_score > 8",
"message": "🚨 ALPHA ALERT: {{company}}\nConviction: {{score}}/10\nSignals: {{summary}}"
}
Expansion Ideas:
Add SEC EDGAR monitoring for insider buying
Include Glassdoor for employee sentiment
Cross-reference with short interest data
Track prediction accuracy over time
Every signal becomes a potential edge—surfaced automatically, scored by AI, delivered to your phone.
From the Daily Briefing: TSMC's $56B Bet, 50 Trillion Tokens, and the Hidden Signals That Move Markets