Kalshi bot course, lesson 1: read a market correctly
Prices, the book, fees by series, close times and settlement rules, and the prompt that builds a market reader.
Every bot starts by reading one market correctly. Most first bots get at least one of these wrong: the time on the ticker, the fee, or what the market actually settles on. This lesson builds a small script that reads any Kalshi market and prints everything a bot needs to know before it trades.
By the end of this lesson you will have a script that takes a market ticker and prints, in plain words: what the market asks, when it closes in your own time, the best prices on both sides and how many contracts sit at each, what one contract would cost after the fee, and the exact rule that decides how it settles.