Concepts

Markets & windows

A series is a Kalshi product family. An event groups related contracts. A market (ticker) is one contract. The archive is one catalog of every series — rolling windows, one-shot events, and strike ladders.

Shapes

shape	What it is	Example
`rolling`	Repeating windows (often 15 minutes)	`KXBTC15M`
`event`	One-shot question	`KXPRESPARTY`
`ladder`	Several strikes on the same event	`KXHIGHNY`

Ticker anatomy

KXBTC15M-26OCT051600-00
│         │         │
│         │         └─ contract suffix
│         └─ close time (exchange convention)
└─ series

Other series use the same idea with different suffixes (strike ladders, game ids, party codes). Always treat the ticker as opaque once you have it from search or list.

Live, closed, settled

Same words on the series list, the event, and the market. Live is still trading (including not-yet-open). Closed means trading ended and the result is not in. Settled means the result is in. A series is Live if any contract in it is Live. Repeating series stay Live while new windows keep opening.

Settlement fields

floor_strike — threshold the contract resolves against, when present
result — yes / no once finalized; empty while live
close_ts / open_ts — unix seconds

Typical flow

GET /api/v1/search?q=super+bowl or GET /api/v1/series?category=politics
GET /api/v1/markets?series=KXHIGHNY
Pick a ticker, then snapshots or export