For the perspective buyers, sharing the scraper I used to watch the market while I was shopping.
Just picked up my Lariat ER and wanted to share something that helped me find it.
Spent a few months watching the market and got tired of refreshing CarGurus every morning. So I put together a Python script that does it automatically -- searches Cars.com, CarGurus, AutoTrader, CarMax, Edmunds, and Carvana every day and spits out a single HTML report I can open in any browser.
Fair warning: I'm not a developer. This was almost entirely vibe coded and dialed in over a few weeks. It works, but there are rough edges.
What it actually does: searches all those sources for used 2023-2024 Lariat listings nationwide, tries to confirm whether each truck is ER or SR using the VIN, filters out Pro/XLT/Flash trims, deduplicates so the same truck from three different sites only shows up once, tracks every price drop over time, and scores each listing against the live market median. You can also set a target color (requires a small tweek to the code) and it flags those separately.
I would often have Claude read the results with me and help me build my top five targets based on what I was seeing as well as price changes.
Known gaps worth being upfront about: AutoTrader blocks it sometimes and it just skips that day. CarGurus occasionally shows wrong specs for the battery type. Some trims slip through when a listing title doesn't include the trim name. I've been fixing things as I run into them.
If you're actively shopping and want to try it: https://github.com/mattbrubakr/f150-lightning-scanner
README has setup instructions. You need Python and about 10 minutes. Main things to change are your zip code and target color. The state file it builds up over time is where the real value is -- once it's been running a few weeks you can see the full price history on any listing. - If you're like me, have AI read it over and tell you how to get going with it.
Good luck out there.
