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Track durable special situations across their full lifecycle. Mergers, tender offers, going-private transactions, spin-offs, activist campaigns, restructuring, and bankruptcy — each with lifecycle status, deal terms, a market snapshot, and a per-filing timeline assembled from the underlying EDGAR record.
The public Situations database is a free, recent, rate-limited research and discovery surface. This API family is the paid, authenticated product: it unlocks the complete archive, higher limits, source-cited Copy-for-LLM exports, and application or agent workflows.

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Why use this

A special situation is not a single filing — it is a durable, evolving object that accretes filings over weeks or months. The SEC API Special Situations surface stitches the triggering and follow-on filings into one situation with a stable situation_id, a lifecycle status, and a timeline, so agents and applications never have to reassemble a deal from raw EDGAR events.
  • Durable situations — one object per deal, with a stable situation_id that survives across follow-on filings
  • Lifecycle status — announced, pending, completed, terminated, and related states, so deal risk is legible at a glance
  • Browse by EDGAR form — resolve “what did this SC 13D / SC TO-T / 425 / DEFM14A filing trigger?” directly, with the form expanded to the situation types it drives
  • Per-filing timeline — the ordered filing history behind each situation, available inline or as a paginated sub-resource
  • Enriched or stripped — request the full projection, or the lean stripped shape for wide scans (billed identically)
  • Agent-ready evidence — carry issuer identifiers, source filings, freshness metadata, field availability, and machine-readable lifecycle fields through the same workflow

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Quick start

# List active mergers
curl -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/situations?types=merger&limit=10"

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Enriched vs. stripped

Every situation list and detail endpoint accepts enrich:
  • enrich=true (default) returns the full projection — deal terms, market snapshot, and timeline context.
  • enrich=false returns the minimal stripped projection: identity, status, and key dates only.
Both are billed identically — choose enrich=false only to reduce payload size on wide scans, never to save quota. 
# Lean stripped shape for a wide scan
curl -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/situations?statuses=pending&enrich=false&limit=100"

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Browse by form

When you already have an EDGAR form in hand and want the situations it opened or advanced, use the by-form endpoint. The form is expanded server-side to the situation types it triggers. URL-encode the form (a space becomes %20): 
curl -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/situations/by-form/SC%2013D?limit=10"
Filter further with statuses, tickers, and enrich. Common triggering forms include SC 13D (activist stake), SC TO-T (third-party tender offer), 425 (merger communications), and DEFM14A (merger proxy).

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The filing timeline

Each situation carries an ordered, oldest-first timeline of the filings that built it. Fetch it inline with the situation, or page it as a standalone sub-resource: 
# Full situation, timeline included
curl -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/situations/sit_abc123"

# Just the timeline, paginated
curl -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/situations/sit_abc123/filings?limit=50"

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Compact summary

When you need the headline — rendered markdown, deal terms, and the latest timeline event — without the full timeline, use the summary sub-resource: 
curl -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/situations/sit_abc123/summary"

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Copy for an LLM, without losing provenance

Use the Markdown export when an agent needs a concise underwriting-ready brief rather than a wide JSON object. It preserves source filing links, accession numbers, dates, and explicitly absent fields. Treat it as evidence to inspect, never as an investment recommendation. 
curl -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/situations/sit_abc123/export"
For machine-readable timeline and field-level work, retrieve the detail or filings resource instead.

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Endpoints

EndpointDescription
GET /v1/situationsList situations; filter by types, statuses, tickers, forms, enrich
GET /v1/situations/feedReverse-chronological feed of situation events
GET /v1/situations/calendarUpcoming key dates (record, vote, expiry, expected close)
GET /v1/situations/statsCounts by type, status, sector, and market-cap bucket
GET /v1/situations/performanceClosed-situation outcome cohorts
GET /v1/situations/by-form/{form}Situations opened or advanced by an EDGAR form
GET /v1/situations/{situation_id}One situation with its full per-filing timeline
GET /v1/situations/{situation_id}/filingsPaginated per-filing timeline
GET /v1/situations/{situation_id}/summaryCompact summary: markdown, deal terms, latest event
GET /v1/situations/{situation_id}/exportSource-cited Markdown Copy-for-LLM brief

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SDK and CLI

The secapi CLI mirrors the plane: 
secapi situations list --types merger --limit 10
secapi situations by-form --form "SC 13D"
secapi situations get --situation-id sit_abc123
secapi situations filings --situation-id sit_abc123
secapi situations summary --situation-id sit_abc123
The JavaScript SDK exposes the same surface under client.situations: 
await client.situations.list({ types: "merger", limit: 10 })
await client.situations.byForm("SC 13D")
await client.situations.get("sit_abc123")
await client.situations.filings("sit_abc123")
await client.situations.summary("sit_abc123")

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Product boundary

This documentation describes the customer-facing Special Situations plane only. TIKR-style fundamentals, estimates, valuation, screener, and symbol-breadth data are proprietary omni-apps infrastructure and are not a public SEC API, SDK, CLI, MCP, pricing, or marketing product.