Fintel Data Skill: Institutional Market Intel for Agents

Where this fits

A user asks your agent: "Why is GME dropping? Check borrow fee, short volume, and FTDs." Without institutional-grade data, the agent either guesses or scrapes messy finance sites. The fintel-data skill plugs directly into Fintel's REST API or official MCP server, so your agent can answer with actual short interest, 13F ownership, insider filings, and analyst targets instead of fuzzy web summaries.

Why agents benefit

• Validates short-squeeze narratives using real borrow rate, shares available to borrow, and fails-to-deliver data.
• Explains ownership shifts by pulling institutional holders from SEC 13F filings and insider transaction details from Form 3/4/5.
• Separates price sentiment from data by reading analyst price targets, ratings, and forecasts alongside market metrics.
• Contextualizes price moves with earnings and dividend calendars, EOD price bars, and last-trade prices.
• Stays read-only and API-key driven, making it safe to embed in agent tool loops without write risk.

Practical scenarios

Pre-earnings short thesis check

An agent reviews a stock before earnings: it pulls short interest, borrow fee, daily short volume, and FTDs. If the borrow rate is spiking while available shares collapse, the agent can flag a rising squeeze risk instead of relying on opinion pieces.

“Who owns X?” institutional breakdown

A user wants to know why a stock moved after a big 13F filing. The agent fetches institutional owners, compares quarter-over-quarter positioning, and summarizes concentration changes from Fintel's ownership dataset.

Insider transaction monitor

An agent watches Form 4 filings for insider buying or selling. When a director buys a meaningful stake, the agent can combine it with current short interest and analyst ratings to produce a balanced signal for the user.

Add it to your agent workflow

Install the skill with:

npx skills add himself65/finance-skills --skill fintel-data

Set FINTEL_API_KEY as an environment variable, then point your agent at the Fintel MCP server at https://mcp.fintel.io/mcp or call the REST API directly with the X-API-KEY header. A user prompt like "What is the current borrow rate and FTD count for ticker X?" should trigger the skill and return structured data from Fintel.

Compare before adopting

Check data freshness and coverage against alternatives like S3 Short Sale data, FINRA short volume reports, or ChartExchange. Review how actively the repo is maintained, how responsive the author is to issues, and whether the API key/rate-limit model fits your deployment. Also decide whether the official MCP server or REST calls integrate better with your existing agent runtime.

Why it is worth tracking

With 3.3k GitHub stars and a clear read-only design, this skill is a strong signal that market-data agents are moving toward structured APIs over scraping. Track it if you build stock research, due diligence, or compliance workflows. For ongoing updates, see the OpenAgentSkill listing at https://www.openagentskill.com/skills/himself65-fintel-data and evaluate it before your next agent upgrade.