Counts the cars in a store’s parking lot from space, the way hedge funds do. It also finds swimming pools that turned green.
- Keyword
- SPY
- Runs
- When you ask
- Tested in
- Claude
- Last run
- 6 Nov 2026
Don’t trust me. Look it up.
Documented4.8M
parking-lot photos of 67,000 stores. Changes in the car counts predicted sales. Around earnings days, that edge was worth 4% to 5%.
Source: Berkeley Haas, 28 May 2019
It works on more than stores. In 2022, France used AI on aerial photos to find more than 20,000 swimming pools people hadn’t declared for tax.
Source: Silicon Republic, 30 Aug 2022
So how do we get that edge?
My adaptationTwo plays from the same trick. One reads a company before it reports. The other finds customers for a local business.
The lot counter
You give itA store chain, for example Costco.
- Picks 20 stores with big open parking lots.
- Gets a satellite photo of each lot on Black Friday, this year and last.
- Counts the cars in every photo.
- Compares the change to what Wall Street expects.
You getA call, how sure it is, and every photo it counted.
It tests the method on last year first.
The green pool finder
You give itA ZIP code.
- Finds every swimming pool in recent satellite photos.
- Keeps the ones that turned green.
- Drafts a postcard to “Current resident”. No names.
- Drafts a pitch to one local pool company.
You getThe green pools, the postcards and the pitch. Nothing gets mailed without you.
This is my real run.
Tested6 Nov 2026 · free map photos · Phoenix
53
cars, on a photo from 3 Feb 2026. Anything too dark to call was left out, so 53 is a floor.
1
pool out of 260 turned green: blue in June 2021, dark green in March 2026.
What didn’t work: a classic car detector (it boxed the painted lines) and a scan for green (it found lawns). What worked: checking every parking stall by eye, and comparing old photos to new ones.
I haven’t run the Black Friday comparison yet. Black Friday 2026 is 27 November.
And the green pool could be a green cover. From above it looks the same.
What it can’t do.
- Cars are shoppers, not sales.
- Free map photos don’t let you pick the day. One exact day starts at $15 on SkyFi.
- Trees, shade and dark cars hide cars, so counts run low.
- The $100 per cleanup is my own offer idea, not a market rate.
- Postcards go to “Current resident”. Nothing gets mailed without you.
Source: SkyFi FAQ, image price
An AI that can browse the web. I tested it in Claude. For a photo from an exact day, an imagery account such as SkyFi.
Not financial advice. Hedge funds have been doing this for over a decade.
Now it’s your edge.
DaveOS
Or get the whole agent.
DaveOS connects to your AI and runs Satellite Spy with you. You type one line. It does the job step by step and stops for your OK before anything gets mailed.
Opening soon. $5 a month for the first 100 members.
DaveOS plugs into the AI you already use.
It opens on Claude first. The others follow as I test each one.