Kalshi

Purpose

Manage Kalshi event-contract trades: discover markets, inspect orderbooks, view portfolio, place and cancel orders.

Tooling

No bundled CLI — call the official REST API directly with any HTTP client (e.g. curl). Public endpoints need no auth; portfolio endpoints need the three KALSHI-ACCESS-* headers from the Auth section below.

BASE=https://api.elections.kalshi.com/trade-api/v2

curl -s "$BASE/exchange/status"                          # exchange status (public)
curl -s "$BASE/events?limit=10"                          # open events (public)
curl -s "$BASE/markets?series_ticker=KXGDPYEAR&limit=10" # markets (public)
curl -s "$BASE/markets/KXGDPYEAR-26/orderbook?depth=5"    # orderbook (public)

Authenticated calls: GET $BASE/portfolio/balance, GET $BASE/portfolio/positions, GET $BASE/portfolio/orders, POST $BASE/portfolio/events/orders to place, DELETE $BASE/portfolio/events/orders/{order_id} to cancel. Swap the base for https://demo-api.kalshi.co/trade-api/v2 for dry runs.

Auth

Credentials come from environment variables at runtime — never hardcoded, never written to files, logs, or memory.

• KALSHI_API_KEY_ID — API key UUID, from Kalshi Settings > API
• KALSHI_PRIVATE_KEY_PEM — RSA private key PEM contents (shown only once at key creation), or KALSHI_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH for a PEM file path
• KALSHI_ENV — demo | production (default production)
• KALSHI_BASE_URL — optional override

Authenticated requests sign timestamp + METHOD + path (no delimiters, path without the query string) with RSA-PSS-SHA256, sent as three headers: KALSHI-ACCESS-KEY (key UUID), KALSHI-ACCESS-TIMESTAMP (current POSIX time in milliseconds), KALSHI-ACCESS-SIGNATURE (base64 signature).

Operating Rules

1. Prices are in cents, 1–99. Every contract pays $1.00 if correct, $0 if wrong (e.g. YES at 65¢ costs $0.65, pays $1.00 on a YES outcome → 35¢ profit).
2. Before placing any order, present ticker / side (YES|NO) / action (buy|sell) / count / price / total cost (= count × price) and require the user's explicit confirmation. Never skip this, never batch it silently.
3. Prefer the demo exchange for dry runs unless the user explicitly wants production.
4. Always compute and state total cost and max payout: cost = count × price cents; max payout = count × $1.00.
5. Verify a position exists (via positions) before selling.
6. On 401/403, check that the signature headers were built (sign the path without the query string, and confirm the key was created for the right environment), not just that the key is right.

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