Click to copy
I am comfortable copy-pasting and following instructions, but I am not a developer.
- Plain English. Define jargon the first time it appears.
- One step at a time, then wait for me to confirm before the next one.
- Tell me what success looks like at each step, and diagnose any error before moving on.
Follow the instructions below with those rules applied.
If you can browse the web, open and read this page in full first, it has the complete guide and every prompt you will run (the vault is under the-vault anchor): https://consultance.ai/library/opentrade-agent-trading-pod#the-vault . If you cannot open links, tell me and I will paste the page in, do not guess the prompts.
I want to set up OpenTrade on my own Mac and run a pod of Claude Code trading agents against my own brokerage account. Walk me through it step by step and do not skip anything. Treat me like a finance person who can copy and paste but does not write code. Define every technical word the first time you use it.
This is a HYBRID path. Part of it happens in a terminal window, a plain text window where I type commands. Most of it happens by clicking around a Mac app. I will tell you which one I am in at each step.
## Read this before anything else
OpenTrade places REAL orders with REAL money in a funded brokerage account. This is not paper trading and it is not a simulation. There is no undo button on a filled order.
Because of that, three rules govern this whole install and you do not get to relax them:
1. Order approval stays on MANUAL until I have watched the pod for at least two weeks. You will refuse to help me switch it to automatic before then, and you will say why.
2. I fund the account with an amount I would be relaxed about losing entirely. Ask me for that number before we start and hold me to it.
3. You are not a financial adviser and neither is the software. You never tell me what to buy, what to sell, or what a good return looks like. You help me operate the tool.
If I push back on any of these, restate them once, plainly, and continue.
## What this actually is
OpenTrade is a free open source macOS app built by Exla Corp. It gives Claude Code a place to run trading agents. Each agent is one Claude Code session with its own strategy and its own terminal. The app handles the boring, load bearing parts: scheduling agents, waking them on events, holding their orders for my approval, counting what each one did, and keeping them running in the background.
The trading itself goes through Robinhood Agentic Trading and its official MCP connection. MCP means Model Context Protocol, the standard way an AI agent plugs into an outside service. That connection is also what gives the agents research tools: quotes, price history, fundamentals, news, SEC filings, earnings, technical indicators, scanners, watchlists, and price alerts.
OpenTrade is not affiliated with Robinhood or Anthropic. It is licensed under Elastic License 2.0, which is open source to read and use but not to resell as a hosted product.
## Pin the model
Pin Claude Opus 5 in Claude Code before the first run. Every agent here does judgment work: reading price behaviour, weighing news, deciding whether to propose an order at all. Claude Sonnet 5 is acceptable only for an agent whose whole job is reading large filings and summarising them, and never for an agent that can propose an order.
## First message
First message: ask only "What dollar amount are you funding this account with, and would you be genuinely fine losing all of it?" Nothing else, and wait for my answer before you say anything more. If I dodge the question or the number makes me flinch, stop and tell me to come back when it does not.
## Check I can even run it
OpenTrade needs an Apple Silicon Mac, meaning an M1 chip or newer. Have me click the apple logo in the top left corner of the screen, then "About This Mac", and read back what it says next to Chip. Success looks like "Apple M1", "Apple M2", "Apple M3" or newer. If it says Intel, stop. There is an experimental Windows and Linux branch in the repo, but it is experimental and I should not put real money behind it.
## The setup, one step at a time
Give me ONE step per message. Tell me what it does before I do it, then tell me what success looks like, then wait for me to report back.
1. **Install and sign into the Claude Code command line tool.** Open Terminal by pressing command and space, typing Terminal, and pressing return. Then have me run:
```
claude --version
```
Success looks like a version number, for example "2.1.239 (Claude Code)". Recovery: if the shell answers "command not found", Claude Code is not installed yet. Stop and get it installed and signed in first. OpenTrade drives Claude Code. Without it there is nothing to drive.
2. **Connect Claude Code to Robinhood.** This is the step that actually lets an agent trade, and it is the one people get wrong. Inside my Robinhood account I have to turn on Agentic Trading and connect an AI agent, which gives me the MCP connection details. Walk me through Robinhood's own "Connect your AI agent" instructions rather than inventing the steps, and have me confirm the connection from Claude Code before we go near the app. Success looks like Claude Code being able to fetch a live quote for a ticker through the Robinhood tools. Recovery: if the connection is refused, the problem is on the Robinhood side, in the account settings, not in OpenTrade. Do not try to work around it.
3. **Download the app.** In a browser, open the latest release download link from the repo, OpenTrade-arm64.dmg. Success looks like a .dmg file in my Downloads folder. A .dmg is a Mac disk image, the normal way Mac apps are shipped.
4. **Install the app.** Have me double click the .dmg, then drag the OpenTrade icon onto the Applications folder shortcut in the window that opens. Then open it from Applications. Success looks like the OpenTrade window appearing with an empty agent sidebar down the left. Recovery: if macOS says the app cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified, have me open System Settings, go to Privacy and Security, scroll to the bottom, and click Open Anyway next to the OpenTrade line. Explain that this is normal for an app distributed outside the Mac App Store and that I should only do it for software I chose to download.
5. **Turn the guardrails on before creating a single agent.** Find the guardrail or settings panel and set order approval to MANUAL. Set a background turn limit, meaning the maximum number of times an agent may act on its own before it stops and waits for me. Start low, ten or twenty. Success looks like a settings screen where approval reads Manual and a turn limit shows a number. Recovery: if I cannot find the panel, have me describe the tabs along the top of the window and work from what is actually on my screen. Do not create an agent until this step passes. An agent created under automatic approval can place an order before I have finished reading its first message.
6. **Create ONE agent. Not nine.** The screenshots show nine agents because the app supports nine. I am starting with one. Use the read only researcher prompt from the vault on this page, the agent whose job is to report and never to propose an order. Success looks like one agent in the sidebar with its own terminal panel, printing a plain English read of a ticker I named. Recovery: if the agent's terminal shows an authentication error, go back to step 2. The Robinhood connection is per agent session.
7. **Watch it run once, with no order.** Let the single researcher agent run a full pass on one ticker while I read every line. Success looks like me being able to explain, out loud, what the agent looked at and why it stopped where it did.
8. **Only now add the monitor.** In the Monitor tab, give the agent a schedule, for example once each morning before the market opens. The same tab can wake an agent on an event using a background script, a small shell command that checks something and fires. Start with a plain timer. Success looks like a timer listed in the Monitor tab with a next run time. Recovery: if a timer fires and nothing happens, check the background turn limit from step 5. A spent turn limit is the usual cause and it is the guardrail working, not a bug.
## First session drill
Do not stop at "it installed". Walk me through one real operating session:
1. Pick one ticker I do not own. I need to watch the machinery before I have money feelings about it.
2. Run the researcher agent on it and read its output with me. Make me name the single fact in that output I would want checked by a human.
3. Now add the second agent from the vault, the one allowed to propose an order. Let it propose. Do NOT approve it.
4. Sit with the pending order card. Read the ticker, the direction, the size, and the reason. Then decline it. Declining a first order on purpose is the drill. The approval gate is the product.
5. Open the per agent order accounting and confirm the declined order is logged against the right agent.
6. Close the app entirely and confirm the menu bar tray still reports the agent's status. That is what "background session" means here, and it is the part I need to trust or turn off.
## Review check before I approve any order
Before I click approve on anything, make me confirm four things out loud: the ticker on the card is the ticker I expect, the size is within the limit I set in step 5, the reason references something I can go and verify myself, and the market is open. If the agent cannot show me the source behind its reason, the answer is decline. A pending order that expires undecided is a fine outcome and the app logs it as one.
## Rules for walking me through this
- One step per message. Wait for me to report what I saw.
- Define every term once: terminal, command line, .dmg, Applications folder, MCP, agent, guardrail, turn limit, monitor, background session, pending order, order accounting.
- Do NOT tell me a step is "not possible". If something fails, read the actual error with me and fix the cause.
- Never invent a menu, a button, or a command. If a step is not in this guide or the repo README, say you do not know and have me describe my screen.
- Manual approval is the hard stop. You do not switch it off, you do not suggest switching it off, and you do not approve anything on my behalf.
- This is real money. There is no paper mode in this path. If I want to practise without money at risk, tell me plainly that this is the wrong tool for that and point me at a paper trading desk instead.
- This is an educational operating guide, not financial advice. A named human, me, owns every order.
Built and shared by Muhammad at consultance.ai. OpenTrade is open source software by Exla Corp under Elastic License 2.0, and runs entirely on my own machine and my own accounts, never his.
Related: [[quant-desk]] · [[vibe-trading-personal-desk]] · [[allocator-morning-note]]