Documentation

Getting started

From nothing to a paper agent running on your Mac. Setup is per account and per Mac, because your Robinhood link and your model API keys live in that Mac's Keychain.

• 1. What you need
• 2. Your TICKERSMITH account
• 3. Installing the app
• 4. First run: four steps
• 5. Settings worth visiting first
• 6. Try it on past days first
• 7. What leaves your Mac

1. What you need

• An Apple-silicon Mac on macOS 13 or later. Intel Macs are not supported.
• The Mac awake during the session windows of the agents you start. TICKERSMITH runs on your machine, not in the cloud: when the app is closed or the Mac is asleep, nothing runs — no entries, and no exits either.
• A Robinhood account you connect through Robinhood's Agentic Trading. This is the only market data source: quotes, one-minute bars, the daily-gainers scan and per-symbol news all come through it, and paper trading needs it too.
• An API key for at least one model provider — Jev, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or any OpenAI-compatible server — if you want to run a model strategy. The rule strategies need none.
• For TradingAgents only: a few gigabytes of disk for the Python runtime the app installs on request.

2. Your TICKERSMITH account

Every Mac signs in to a TICKERSMITH account. It is what carries your closed trades, daily results, watchlist and a backup of your settings between Macs and into your web account.

1. Ask for access. TICKERSMITH is in a private beta. You will get a confirmation email first — confirm your address, and an invitation follows when a spot opens. An invitation is good for 7 days and works once, for that address.
2. Create the account from the invitation, with a password of at least 12 characters. A welcome email follows with three things to do: confirm your email, get the Mac app, and sign in.
3. Sign in on the Mac with the same email. The session is stored in your Keychain; network trouble never signs you out. Only the server ending the session — or an administrator suspending the account — does.

Settings → Profile & sync shows the account, the last sync, the cloud backup of your settings with a restore button, and sign out. Your web account at app.tickersmith.app shows your Macs, your days, your trades and your watchlist.

3. Installing the app

1. Download TICKERSMITH for Mac — Apple silicon, macOS 13 or later.
2. Open the disk image and drag TICKERSMITH to your Applications folder.
3. Open it from Applications. The beta is not notarized by Apple yet, so macOS blocks the first launch. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the message about TICKERSMITH, click Open Anyway and confirm. Later launches open normally.
4. Sign in with the email your invitation went to.

4. First run: four steps

The first sign-in on a Mac opens setup. Three things and your desk is ready — four screens in all. Everything you enter here stays on this Mac.

Step 1 — Connect Robinhood

TICKERSMITH reads quotes, one-minute bars, the pre-market gapper scan and news through Robinhood's Agentic Trading connection, in paper mode too. You sign in to Robinhood in your browser and approve TICKERSMITH; the page updates by itself when you are done. The tokens go into the macOS Keychain.

You may also select a trading account: the one account live orders are confined to. Use a separately funded Agentic account if you have one. Paper trading does not need it. Orders only ever reach Robinhood once you set an agent's book to live.

Step 2 — Choose your AI model

Model strategies ask narrow, typed questions — what is the catalyst, take this breakout or wait, hold or exit — and code acts only on confident answers. Jev is built for this. You can use Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or an OpenAI-compatible server on your own key instead: they get the same questions and must answer with a probability per option, so every threshold means the same thing.

Keys are stored in the macOS Keychain, never on disk. Test the connection before continuing — the test is free. Each agent later picks its own model; the app-wide spend caps live in Settings → Models.

Step 3 — Meet the agents

An agent runs one strategy on an allocation you set, in the paper account or live, within caps the order gate enforces on every order. Every plan, order, fill and exit it makes is shown on its page. Pick one to set up after setup, or skip and create agents later from the Agents page.

If your account has a backup from another Mac, this step offers to restore your agents and order gate settings. Restored agents come back stopped — nothing starts trading behind your back.

Step 4 — Review and start

A checklist of Robinhood, your model, your agents and your account, with the book your own orders will use — paper: simulated fills against live quotes, or Robinhood (live) — and a reminder that each agent picks its own book. Then either Try it on past days first or Set up my first agent.

5. Settings worth visiting first

Settings → Account

Your paper account's starting cash — $10,000 by default — and Reset. Also the Paper | Robinhood (live) toggle, which is the book your own orders use; agents carry their own book, so this does not change what any agent does. Both books are always open, so the switch applies at once.

Settings → Order gate

The app-wide limits on top of each agent's own. The defaults: a cash floor of $1,000 that buys never spend into, no allowlist, no orders-per-day or daily-loss cap, the pattern-day-trader guard on, and manual approval on. Reaching a daily loss limit disarms the gate: every agent halts until you re-arm.

Settings → Models

Providers and keys, the default model per provider, prices, the global monthly and daily spend caps, and recent calls with the agent that made each one.

Settings → Strategies & runtime

The strategy directory, and the Python runtime TradingAgents needs — Install, Check and Remove, with the install log. An agent that needs Python cannot start until the health check passes.

Settings → Appearance

System, White or Black, and the color legend: gains green, losses red, limits amber, the models' estimates purple.

Settings → News

Which sources the News feed uses, domains to add or ignore, and the refresh window.

6. Try it on past days first

Before any agent, open Scenarios from the Trades page and ask a question about the past: "what if I'd put $1,000 into Apple in 2008?" Nothing touches your account and nothing is saved. See How investing works for what scenarios can answer.

Then create one paper agent — a daily rule strategy on a small allocation and a handful of symbols is the gentlest start — and watch it for a few sessions before you consider live.

7. What leaves your Mac

Your Mac syncs to your TICKERSMITH account every five minutes, a few seconds after a change, and at sign-in. It sends:

• this Mac's name, macOS and app version, whether it is paper or live, whether it is armed, an agents summary, account value, cash, today's P&L and open positions;
• closed trades, each with the agent that made it;
• day summaries for the last 30 days that changed;
• watchlist edits and deletions;
• your agents' configurations and your gate settings when they change — one backup per account, restorable on another Mac.

What never leaves: your Robinhood tokens, your model API keys and your TICKERSMITH session. All three live only in the macOS Keychain.

Everything else is local, in ~/Library/Application Support/app.tickersmith/ — your settings, your limits, and the database holding agents, runs, events, lots, days, equity, orders, fills, the paper account, the model ledger and a week of headlines.