8-K Material Event Alerts: SEC Item Decoder

Use this to get an alert feed of new SEC Form 8-K filings with every item number decoded into plain English and ranked by severity. A bare 4.02 becomes "Said past financial statements can no longer be relied on (restatement)", tagged high. A bare 5.07 becomes "Reported the results of a shareholder vote", tagged low. Set a minimum severity, turn on monitor mode, and each scheduled run returns only the new bankruptcies, cyber incidents, restatements, delisting notices, changes in control, debt accelerations, impairments and layoffs since the last run.

One row per filing, straight from the SEC's official keyless EDGAR APIs, ready for a Slack alert, a spreadsheet, a database or a trading model. Every row carries a plain-English eventSummary, an eventSeverity tier (high, medium or low), the highSeverityItems that triggered it, the 8-K item codes with their official titles and event tags, plus the company name, CIK, tickers, exchange, industry, state, and direct links to the filing index, the primary document and the company's filing history. You are never charged twice for the same filing in monitor mode.

It still covers the rest of EDGAR when you need it: 10-K, 10-Q, S-1 and F-1 IPO filings, 13D/13G, proxies and full-text search since 2001.

No API key, no login, no proxy. Price: $0.40 per 1,000 filings (pay per result), plus the standard Apify start fee of $0.00005 per run.

Severity tiers

Each 8-K item is mapped to one tier. A filing's eventSeverity is the highest tier among its items; item 9.01 (exhibits only) carries no event of its own. The tiers are our editorial view of what usually matters to investors, lenders and counterparties, so use eightKItems instead if you need your own selection.

Tier	8-K items
high	1.03 bankruptcy or receivership, 1.05 material cybersecurity incident, 2.04 debt accelerated by a triggering event, 2.05 restructuring, exit costs or layoffs, 2.06 material impairment, 3.01 delisting notice or listing transfer, 4.02 non-reliance on past financials (restatement), 5.01 change in control, 6.04 missed asset-backed distribution
medium	1.01 major agreement signed, 1.02 major agreement ended, 1.04 mine safety order, 2.01 acquisition or disposal completed, 2.02 results released, 2.03 new debt, 3.02 unregistered share sale, 3.03 shareholder rights changed, 4.01 auditor changed, 5.02 director or officer change, 5.06 shell status change, 6.03 credit enhancement changed
low	5.03 charter or bylaws, 5.04 benefit plan blackout, 5.05 code of ethics, 5.07 shareholder vote results, 5.08 nomination deadline, 6.01, 6.02, 6.05, 6.06, 6.10 asset-backed updates, 7.01 Regulation FD, 8.01 other events

minSeverity: "high" returns only filings with at least one high item. "medium" drops the routine low-tier filings, which are a large share of all 8-Ks. Rows the filter removes are never charged.

What this actor does

The SEC publishes every filing made by every public company, fund and issuer in the United States on EDGAR. The raw data is free, but it is awkward to use: the full-text search index returns one hit per document instead of one per filing, the 8-K item numbers are bare codes like 2.02 and 5.02, the company details come from separate files, and the search API silently caps any query at 10,000 results. This actor turns all of that into a feed you can actually use.

For each run it:

1. Reads your filters: form types, 8-K item codes, a minimum severity, tickers or CIKs, an optional full-text phrase, and a date window (the last N days, or exact from and to dates).
2. Resolves tickers to CIKs using the SEC's official company_tickers_exchange.json file, which also gives each company its tickers and exchange.
3. Queries the official EDGAR full-text search index (efts.sec.gov) page by page, newest first. If a date window holds more than 10,000 matching filings, it splits the window in half and keeps going, so large windows are never silently truncated.
4. Collapses document-level hits into one row per filing (one accession number), keeping the best-matching document for full-text searches.
5. Decodes everything: 8-K items to their official titles, a plain-English summary, an event tag and a severity tier, SIC codes to industry names, EDGAR state and country codes to names, and the filing category (current report, annual report, IPO registration, prospectus, proxy, 5% ownership, late filing notice, delisting).
6. Checks every row against a strict schema before it is saved or charged. A row that fails the check is dropped and counted, never pushed and never billed.
7. In monitor mode, stores the accession numbers it delivered in a named key-value store, so the next run skips them.

Key features

• Severity filter. minSeverity (any, low, medium, high) keeps only the 8-Ks that matter to you, so an alert channel is not flooded with shareholder votes and Reg FD decks.
• Plain-English summaries. eventSummary says what happened in one line, for every item on the filing, ready to paste into an alert.
• 8-K event decoding. Every 8-K comes with eightKItems (codes), eightKItemLabels (the SEC's official item titles) and eightKEventTypes (plain tags such as earnings, acquisition_completed, executive_change, bankruptcy, restatement, cybersecurity_incident). Filter by item code or by event name.
• IPO watch. Use the form alias IPO to get S-1, F-1, S-11 and 424B4 filings in one run. Registration rows carry an isPreIpo flag that is true when the company has no listed ticker yet.
• Full-text search. Search the text of every EDGAR filing since 2001 for a phrase such as "going concern", "material weakness", "tariff" or a product name, limited to the form types you choose.
• Monitor mode. onlyNewSinceLastRun remembers every accession number delivered, so scheduled runs return only new filings and never charge for the same filing twice.
• Watchlists. Pass tickers (AAPL, MSFT) or CIKs and get every new filing for those companies, any form type.
• Flat, typed schema. 36 fields, every one documented and typed in the dataset schema, with ready-made views for 8-K events, IPO filings and full-text hits.
• Company filings only. Insider ownership forms (3, 4 and 5) and Form 144 are never queried. On Schedules 13D and 13G only the subject company is output, never the individual filer.
• Built-in cost guard. Every request is checked against a request cap, a byte cap, a per-request timeout and a run deadline. A run that finds nothing stops cheaply.

Use cases

• Material event alerts. Run the actor every 15 minutes with minSeverity: "high" and monitor mode on, and post each new row's companyName, eventSummary and primaryDocumentUrl to Slack or Discord. You hear about bankruptcies, cyber incidents, restatements and delisting notices minutes after they hit EDGAR, without the noise of routine filings.
• Event-driven trading and research. Run it on 8-K items 1.01, 2.01, 5.02 and 1.03 to get only new material agreements, completed acquisitions, executive changes and bankruptcies, decoded and linked.
• IPO and capital markets tracking. Investment bankers, IPO newsletters, VCs and recruiters watch S-1, F-1 and 424B4 filings every day to see who just filed to go public, with industry, state and exchange.
• Risk and compliance monitoring. Credit, compliance and audit teams watch a portfolio of tickers or CIKs for any new filing, or flag auditor changes (item 4.01), restatements (item 4.02), delisting notices (item 3.01) and late filing notices (NT 10-K, NT 10-Q).
• Full-text research. Analysts and journalists search 10-K and 10-Q text for phrases like "going concern", "material weakness" or "supply chain disruption" and get one row per filing with a link to the exact document that matched.
• M&A and activism watch. Use the M&A alias (merger proxies, tender offers, Form 425, S-4) or Schedules 13D and 13G to see which companies are being acquired or have a new 5% holder.
• Data pipelines and AI agents. Feed a database, a vector store or an LLM agent with a clean, deduplicated stream of new filings and their document links, instead of parsing EDGAR yourself.
• Sales and business development. Lawyers, auditors, IR firms, D&O insurers and financial printers find companies at the exact moment they need help: a new IPO filing, an auditor change, a restatement or a bankruptcy.

Input

All fields are optional. With no input the actor returns up to 100 of the newest 8-K filings from the last 7 days.

Field	Type	Default	What it does
formTypes	array	["8-K"]	Form types to return. Examples: 8-K, 10-K, 10-Q, 20-F, 6-K, S-1, F-1, 424B4, DEF 14A, 13D, 13G. Aliases: IPO, 424B*, PROXY, M&A, TENDER OFFER, DELISTING, LATE FILING, any. Amendments (/A) are included automatically.
eightKItems	array	none	8-K item codes or event names, for example 2.02, 5.02, Item 1.03, earnings, bankruptcy, restatement, cybersecurity. When set, results are 8-K filings only.
minSeverity	string	any	any, low, medium or high. Return only 8-K filings whose most serious item is at least this tier (see Severity tiers). Any value other than any limits the run to Form 8-K.
tickers	array	none	Stock tickers to watch, such as AAPL or BRK-B. Resolved to CIKs with the SEC's official ticker file.
ciks	array	none	SEC Central Index Keys. Leading zeros are optional.
fullTextQuery	string	none	A word or phrase to search inside filing text, for example "going concern". Use double quotes for an exact phrase. Results are ordered by relevance.
filedWithinDays	integer	7	Look-back window in days (1 to 3650). Ignored if filedFrom is set.
filedFrom, filedTo	date	none	Exact date window (YYYY-MM-DD). Full-text coverage starts in 2001.
includeAmendments	boolean	true	Include amended filings such as 8-K/A and 10-K/A.
onlyNewSinceLastRun	boolean	false	Monitor mode. Return only filings not delivered by an earlier run that used the same stateStoreName.
stateStoreName	string	sec-edgar-filings-monitor-seen	Name of the key-value store that remembers delivered filings. Use a different name per watchlist.
maxItems	integer	100	Maximum filings to return (up to 10,000).
maxApiRequests	integer	200	Safety cap on SEC API requests per run.
maxRunSeconds	integer	300	Safety cap on run time.

Example inputs

High-severity alert feed, new filings only (schedule it every 15 minutes):

{ "minSeverity": "high", "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true, "stateStoreName": "8k-high-alerts", "filedWithinDays": 2, "maxItems": 200 }

Newest 8-K filings from the last week:

{ "formTypes": ["8-K"], "filedWithinDays": 7, "maxItems": 25 }

Bankruptcies and restatements in the last 30 days:

{ "formTypes": ["8-K"], "eightKItems": ["1.03", "4.02"], "filedWithinDays": 30, "maxItems": 100 }

IPO watch:

{ "formTypes": ["IPO"], "filedWithinDays": 14, "maxItems": 100 }

Watchlist monitor, every form type, new filings only (schedule it hourly):

{ "formTypes": ["any"], "tickers": ["AAPL", "MSFT", "NVDA"], "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true, "stateStoreName": "megacap-watch" }

Full-text search in annual and quarterly reports:

{ "formTypes": ["10-K", "10-Q"], "fullTextQuery": "\"going concern\"", "filedWithinDays": 90, "maxItems": 200 }

Output

One row per filing. Fields that do not apply to a filing are null (for example, the 8-K fields on a 10-K, or the full-text fields when no query was given).

Field	Description
accessionNumber	SEC accession number, the unique id of the filing
formType, baseFormType, isAmendment	Form as filed (8-K/A), the root form (8-K) and whether it is an amendment
filingCategory	current_report, annual_report, quarterly_report, ipo_registration, prospectus, proxy, beneficial_ownership_5pct, late_filing_notice, delisting_deregistration and more
filedAt, periodOfReport	Filing date and the period the filing reports on
companyName, cik	Filer or subject company and its 10-digit CIK
tickers, exchange	Listed tickers and exchange from the SEC ticker file
sic, sicDescription	Standard Industrial Classification code and industry name
stateOfIncorporation, stateOfIncorporationName	EDGAR state or country code and its name
businessState, businessStateName, businessLocation	Business address state and city as published by EDGAR
fileNumber	SEC file number
eightKItems, eightKItemLabels, eightKEventTypes	8-K item codes, official titles and plain event tags
eventSummary	What happened, in plain English, one clause per item (null for non-8-K forms)
eventSeverity	high, medium or low: the highest tier among the items (null for non-8-K forms or exhibits-only 8-Ks)
highSeverityItems	The high-tier item codes on the filing (empty when none)
isPreIpo	On registration statements, true if the company has no listed ticker yet
coFilerCount	Number of other entities on the filing (not named)
documentDescription	Description of the primary or matched document
primaryDocumentUrl, filingIndexUrl, companyFilingsUrl	Links to the main document, the filing index page and the company's EDGAR filing list
fullTextQuery, fullTextMatchedDocumentUrl, fullTextMatchedDocumentType, fullTextScore	For full-text runs: the query, the document that matched, its type (for example EX-99.1) and the relevance score
scrapedAt	When the row was produced

Sample output

This is a real row from a test run on November 4, 2026:

{
  "accessionNumber": "0002078008-26-000023",
  "formType": "8-K",
  "baseFormType": "8-K",
  "isAmendment": false,
  "filingCategory": "current_report",
  "filedAt": "2026-11-04",
  "periodOfReport": "2026-11-04",
  "companyName": "Versigent PLC",
  "cik": "0002078008",
  "tickers": ["VGNT"],
  "exchange": "NYSE",
  "sic": "3714",
  "sicDescription": "Motor Vehicle Parts & Accessories",
  "stateOfIncorporation": "Y9",
  "stateOfIncorporationName": "Jersey",
  "businessState": null,
  "businessStateName": null,
  "businessLocation": "Schaffhausen",
  "fileNumber": "001-42957",
  "eightKItems": ["2.02", "9.01"],
  "eightKItemLabels": ["Results of Operations and Financial Condition", "Financial Statements and Exhibits"],
  "eightKEventTypes": ["earnings"],
  "eventSummary": "Released quarterly or annual results",
  "eventSeverity": "medium",
  "highSeverityItems": [],
  "isPreIpo": null,
  "coFilerCount": 0,
  "documentDescription": "8-K",
  "primaryDocumentUrl": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2078008/000207800826000023/vgnt-20261104.htm",
  "filingIndexUrl": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2078008/000207800826000023/0002078008-26-000023-index.htm",
  "companyFilingsUrl": "https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0002078008&type=8-K&dateb=&owner=include&count=40",
  "fullTextQuery": null,
  "fullTextMatchedDocumentUrl": null,
  "fullTextMatchedDocumentType": null,
  "fullTextScore": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-04T20:48:04.725Z"
}

The run also writes an OUTPUT record to the default key-value store with run statistics: total matching filings reported by the SEC index, pages read, requests and bytes used, rows filtered or skipped as already seen, warnings and why the run stopped.

8-K item reference

Item	Official title (short)	Event tag
1.01	Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement	material_agreement
1.02	Termination of a Material Definitive Agreement	agreement_terminated
1.03	Bankruptcy or Receivership	bankruptcy
1.05	Material Cybersecurity Incidents	cybersecurity_incident
2.01	Completion of Acquisition or Disposition of Assets	acquisition_completed
2.02	Results of Operations and Financial Condition	earnings
2.03	Creation of a Direct Financial Obligation	new_debt
2.05	Costs Associated with Exit or Disposal Activities	restructuring_layoffs
2.06	Material Impairments	impairment
3.01	Notice of Delisting or Failure to Satisfy a Listing Rule	delisting_notice
3.02	Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities	unregistered_equity_sale
4.01	Changes in Registrant's Certifying Accountant	auditor_change
4.02	Non-Reliance on Previously Issued Financial Statements	restatement
5.01	Changes in Control of Registrant	change_in_control
5.02	Departure or Election of Directors or Certain Officers	executive_change
5.07	Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders	shareholder_vote
7.01	Regulation FD Disclosure	reg_fd_disclosure
8.01	Other Events	other_events
9.01	Financial Statements and Exhibits	exhibits

All 34 items defined by the SEC are decoded, including the mine safety (1.04) and asset-backed securities (6.01 to 6.10) items. Item 9.01 (exhibits) is listed in eightKItems but is not counted as an event in eightKEventTypes.

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• $0.40 per 1,000 filings returned (event filing-returned, $0.0004 per filing).
• $0.00005 per run start (the standard Apify actor start event).

You pay only for filings delivered to your dataset. Rows dropped by the schema check, rows filtered out by your settings, and filings skipped in monitor mode are never charged. Platform compute is included in the event price.

Worst case per run: the default maxItems of 100 caps a run at about $0.04. Setting maxItems to the maximum of 10,000 caps it at about $4.00. You can also set a maximum cost per run in Apify Console; the actor stops before it goes over.

Typical costs:

Scenario	Filings	Cost
Daily 8-K digest	300 per day	about $0.12 per day
Hourly watchlist monitor, 50 tickers	about 20 new filings per day	under $0.01 per day plus run starts
Weekly IPO watch	about 60 per week	about $0.02 per week
One-off full-text study	2,000 filings	about $0.80

A run that finds no matching filings costs only the start fee and a few cents of compute at most, because the built-in cost guard stops runs that read pages without producing rows.

FAQ

Do I need an SEC or Apify API key? No SEC key is needed. The actor uses the SEC's public, keyless EDGAR APIs. You only need an Apify account to run it.

How fresh is the data? EDGAR's full-text index is usually updated within minutes of a filing being accepted. Filings accepted after the SEC's 5:30 PM Eastern cut-off carry the next business day's filing date. Schedule the actor every 15 minutes to an hour for alert use.

How does monitor mode work? With onlyNewSinceLastRun on, the accession number of every delivered filing is saved in a named key-value store (stateStoreName). Later runs skip any filing already in that store, and skipped filings are not charged. The store keeps up to 200,000 accession numbers and drops the oldest first. Use a different store name for each watchlist so they do not share history.

How do I get alerts in Slack, email or a sheet? Schedule the actor in Apify Console with monitor mode on, then add an integration (Slack, email, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, n8n or a webhook) that fires when the run succeeds. Each run's dataset holds only new filings.

Why are Forms 3, 4 and 5 not available? Those forms are filed by individual officers, directors and insiders, and their main content is a person's name and trades. This actor is built for company-level filings and deliberately does not query them. If you ask for them, they are skipped with a warning.

How are Schedules 13D and 13G handled? These forms report when someone buys more than 5% of a company. The actor outputs the subject company (the company whose shares were bought), with its tickers and industry. The filer, who is often an individual, is never named; coFilerCount shows how many other entities were on the filing.

Why does a filing appear once even when many documents matched my full-text search? The EDGAR index returns one hit per document (the main filing, each exhibit). The actor collapses them into one row per accession number and keeps the best-matching document in fullTextMatchedDocumentUrl, so you are charged once per filing.

Can I get more than 10,000 filings? The SEC index returns at most 10,000 results per query. When a date window holds more, the actor splits it into smaller windows and continues, newest first, up to your maxItems.

Does it download the filing documents or extract financial numbers? No. It returns filing metadata and direct links. For XBRL financial statement numbers (revenue, net income, assets), use our SEC Company Financials (XBRL) actor.

Is the data accurate? Every value comes from the SEC's own index and ticker file. Industry, state and exchange are those the company reported to EDGAR. On filings with several entities, per-entity details are filled in only when the SEC data lines up with the first entity; otherwise they are left empty rather than guessed.

How fast is it? The actor spaces its requests about 130 ms apart (under 8 requests per second, within the SEC's fair-access limit) and reads 100 filings per request. A 100-filing run usually finishes in a few seconds.

Limits

• Full-text search covers filings from 2001 onward. Older filings are not in the SEC's full-text index.
• Insider forms (3, 4, 5), Form 144 and Form D are not queried. For Form D private placements, use our SEC Form D Funding Leads actor.
• 13F holdings reports are not included here. Use our SEC 13F Institutional Holdings actor.
• On Schedules 13D and 13G only the subject company is output.
• Tickers and exchange come from the SEC's current ticker file, so delisted or never-listed companies have an empty tickers list.
• The SEC index does not publish the acceptance time of day, only the filing date. Newest-first order is by filing date.
• Rows are filing metadata and links. Document text, exhibits and financial values are not extracted.
• A run stops at maxItems, maxApiRequests, maxRunSeconds or your maximum cost per run, whichever comes first. The reason is written to the OUTPUT record.

Data source and license

All data comes from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR system through its public, keyless endpoints: the EDGAR full-text search index (efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index) and the company ticker and exchange file (sec.gov/files/company_tickers_exchange.json). Information published by the SEC is a work of the U.S. federal government and is in the public domain. The SEC does not endorse this actor.

The actor follows the SEC's fair-access policy: it identifies itself with a descriptive user agent, stays under 8 requests per second, retries politely and never sends more requests than your caps allow. It outputs company-level filing data only and does not collect personal contact details.

Alternatives to this actor

You can query EDGAR yourself: the SEC's full-text search website is free for manual searches, and its JSON endpoints are open to anyone who follows the fair-access rules. This actor saves the work of paging, deduplicating documents into filings, splitting windows past the 10,000-result cap, decoding 8-K items, SIC codes and state codes, joining tickers and exchanges, and remembering what you have already seen. Comparable paid EDGAR actors on Apify charge the same or more per filing, often with a higher start fee; this one is priced at $0.40 per 1,000 filings with a flat, typed schema and monitor mode built in.

Related actors

• SEC Form D Funding Leads: new private placements and startup funding rounds from Form D filings.
• SEC 13F Institutional Holdings: what hedge funds and institutions hold, from 13F reports.
• SEC Company Financials (XBRL): revenue, earnings, assets and other reported financial values for any public company.

Combine them: monitor 8-K earnings filings here, then pull the reported numbers with the XBRL actor, or watch IPO filings here and check who funded the company earlier with the Form D actor.

Use it from AI assistants (MCP)

8-K Material Event Alerts: SEC Item Decoder works as a tool for AI assistants through the official Apify MCP server. Add this URL to any MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT connectors, VS Code):

https://mcp.apify.com/?actors=transparent_meteorite/sec-edgar-filings-monitor

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?actors=transparent_meteorite/sec-edgar-filings-monitor",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" }
    }
  }
}

Then ask, for example: "Show the latest 8-K filings from Tesla and summarize what changed."

Changelog

• 0.2 (November 2026): first public release. 8-K material event alerts: items decoded into plain English (eventSummary), severity tiers (eventSeverity, highSeverityItems) and a minSeverity filter, plus IPO and form aliases, full-text search, ticker and CIK watchlists, monitor mode, window splitting past 10,000 results and a cost guard.

Support

Found a filing that looks wrong, or need a form type or field that is not covered? Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab with the run ID and the accession number, and we will look at it.

Did this actor do the job? If it saved you time, a short honest review on the Reviews tab helps other people judge it. If something was off, open an Issue on this page with the input you used. I read every one and fix real bugs, usually the same day.