fec tracker build log — five pacs, autonomous pipeline

built an autonomous data pipeline tracking five ai super pacs through the 2026 midterms. everything runs on cloudflare — no github actions, no external cron.

the worker (fec-tracker) hits three fec api endpoints per pac on a daily cron: cycle totals, independent expenditures (schedule e), top donors (schedule a), itemized disbursements (schedule b). writes structured json to kv. on any fetch error, prior data is preserved — nothing is wiped. single tracker_data key holds financial summaries plus up to 10 expenditures, 5 donors, and 5 disbursements per pac.

five pacs tracked: leading the future (c00916114), think big (c00923417), american mission (c00916692), jobs and democracy pac (c00928374), defending our values pac (c00928390). two networks at war — one a16z-backed wanting to block state regulation, one anthropic-backed wanting federal safety requirements.

what we learned from the fec api: the /committee/{id}/ summary endpoint returns null financial fields for new pacs until a formal periodic report is filed. switched to /committee/{id}/totals/?cycle=2026 which aggregates from all filings including 24/48-hour reports. leading the future: $50.1m raised, $11m spent as of the 2025 coverage period. q1 2026 filing deadline is april 15 — the 5:25am pst cron picks up the new numbers automatically.

public page at sunshine.fm/super-pacs/ is standalone html, no framework. fetches live from the worker on load. full seo + json-ld dataset schema + agent-context block for llm citation. three data tables per pac: where money went, who paid for it, who funded it. network groupings labeled pro-ai and pro-regulation.

the frame: this page is the public record of the fight over ai policy in congress, updated every morning before anyone's awake.

tools: claude, claude code, cloudflare workers, cloudflare kv, cloudflare pages, fec open api, wrangler.