Stocks Skill

Read-only market data via Yahoo Finance. Five commands: quote, search, history, compare, crypto. Python stdlib only — no API key, no pip installs. Yahoo's endpoint is unofficial and may rate-limit or change.

When to Use

• User asks for a current stock price (AAPL, TSLA, MSFT, ...)
• User wants to look up a ticker by company name
• User wants OHLCV history or performance over a date range
• User wants to compare several tickers side by side
• User asks for a crypto price (BTC, ETH, SOL, ...)

Prerequisites

Python 3.8+ stdlib only. Optional: set ALPHA_VANTAGE_KEY to enrich market_cap, pe_ratio, and 52-week levels when Yahoo's crumb-protected fields come back null. Free key: https://www.alphavantage.co/support/#api-key

How to Run

Invoke through the terminal tool. Once installed:

SCRIPT=~/.hermes/skills/finance/stocks/scripts/stocks_client.py
python $SCRIPT quote AAPL

All output is JSON on stdout — pipe through jq if you want to slice it.

Quick Reference

python $SCRIPT quote AAPL
python $SCRIPT quote AAPL MSFT GOOGL TSLA
python $SCRIPT search "Tesla"
python $SCRIPT history NVDA --range 6mo
python $SCRIPT compare AAPL MSFT GOOGL
python $SCRIPT crypto BTC ETH SOL

Commands

quote SYMBOL [SYMBOL2 ...]

Current price, change, change%, volume, 52-week high/low.

search QUERY

Find tickers by company name. Returns top 5: symbol, name, exchange, type.

history SYMBOL [--range RANGE]

Daily OHLCV plus stats (min, max, avg, total return %). Ranges: 1mo, 3mo, 6mo, 1y, 5y. Default: 1mo.

compare SYMBOL1 SYMBOL2 [...]

Side-by-side: price, change%, 52-week performance.

crypto SYMBOL [SYMBOL2 ...]

Crypto prices. Pass BTC (the script appends -USD automatically).

Pitfalls

• Yahoo Finance's API is unofficial. Endpoints can change or rate-limit without notice — if requests start failing, that's why.
• market_cap and pe_ratio may return null on quote when Yahoo's crumb session isn't established. Set ALPHA_VANTAGE_KEY to backfill.
• Add a small delay between bulk requests to avoid rate-limiting.
• This is read-only — no order placement, no account integration.

Verification

python ~/.hermes/skills/finance/stocks/scripts/stocks_client.py quote AAPL

Returns a JSON object with symbol: "AAPL" and a numeric price field.