Broker MCP Selector

Broker MCP Selector

Overview

The rest of the Alpha Skills suite is the brain — it screens, scores, detects regimes, and produces a trade plan. This skill is the hands: it answers the next question, "where do I actually place this order, and is it safe to let an agent do it?"

It selects a broker MCP server for execution based on what the user trades, where they are, and how much autonomy they're comfortable giving an agent — then walks them through connecting it with safe defaults.

The authoritative, continuously re-verified data behind this skill lives in awesome-broker-mcp — a directory where every entry was opened and read at the source (the broker's own docs or the server's own repo). A condensed snapshot ships in references/brokers.md; always prefer the live list for the final decision, because this space moves fast and a stale entry is how someone wires an agent to the wrong thing.

When to Use

Invoke this skill when the user wants to:

• "Actually place the trade" / "submit this order" / "execute this"
• "Connect my agent to my brokerage" / "wire up execution"
• "Which broker can Claude trade through?" / "does have an MCP server?"
• "Set up an auto-trader" / "automate my strategy" (pair with ghost-auto-trader)
• "Is it safe to let an AI place orders on my account?"
• Move from a plan produced by any screener/analysis skill to a live or paper order
• Choose between broker MCP servers, or check if one is read-only vs. trade-capable

The two questions that decide almost everything

Before recommending anything, establish these — they collapse the whole option space:

1. Who wrote the server, and can it actually place an order?

   • ✅ Trades — places a real order on its own tool call.
   • 📝 Draft only — builds the order; the human submits it in the broker's UI. The server physically cannot submit (e.g. Interactive Brokers).
   • 👁️ Read-only — cannot place an order. Often official and deliberate. Most people wiring up an LLM for analysis want exactly this.
   • "Has an MCP server" ≠ "can trade." Some official servers are docs-only or read-only; some community repos claim MCP but never register a trading tool. Verify the tool surface, not the marketing.

2. What's the safety posture if the agent does something careless? From safest to sharpest (see references/brokers.md for who sits where):

   • Cannot execute, by design (IBKR draft-approval) — no env var turns it on.
   • Draft-first, prompt-enforced (Trade It) — must draft, show, be told to execute.
   • Paper / sandbox by default (Alpaca, Kraken, Webull) — live is opt-in, server-side.
   • Live on a tool call (Robinhood, Tradier, most community servers) — the only guardrail is your client config.
   • Live, and no paper mode exists (Public.com) — every confirmation is real money.

Workflow

Step 1: Scope the need

Ask (or infer from prior suite output):

• Asset class — equities, options, futures, crypto, FX/CFD, event contracts.
• Region — US, India, Asia, EU, crypto (global).
• Autonomy — analysis only, human-in-the-loop draft approval, or full auto-execution.
• Environment — remote/hosted (paste a URL) vs. local (a process on their machine).

If the honest answer is "I just want analysis," recommend read-only and stop. Least privilege: analysis needs no trading scope, and it removes the entire "prompt injection reaches my account" blast radius.

Step 2: Match against the directory

Read references/brokers.md, then confirm against the live list (https://github.com/mphinance/awesome-broker-mcp) before finalizing. Narrow by asset class + region, then rank by the safety posture the user asked for.

Sensible defaults when the user is unsure:

• Safest thing that still trades → Interactive Brokers (draft-approval, server cannot submit).
• Experiment without risking money → Alpaca or Kraken (paper/sandbox by default).
• Analysis only → SnapTrade / Truthifi (read-only by design).
• Crypto → Kraken, OKX, Bybit, Gemini (all official, all trade).
• India → Zerodha (trades, self-hosted) or Upstox (read-only).

Step 3: Present the recommendation

Give the user a short, decision-shaped answer:

## Recommended: <Broker> MCP

- **Can it trade?** <✅ / 📝 / 👁️> — <one line>
- **Safety posture:** <posture> — <what happens on a careless prompt>
- **Type:** <Local (uvx/npx) / Remote / needs a gateway>
- **Official or community?** <who wrote it — and if community, "strangers' code holding
  your credentials; check the last commit">
- **Why this one:** <ties back to their asset class / region / autonomy answer>
- **Source:** <link to the awesome-broker-mcp page for this broker>

### Safer alternative
<If the pick is "live on a tool call," always name the draft-first or paper-default
option they could use instead.>

Step 4: Wire it up with safe defaults

• Turn paper/sandbox on and leave live off until the user has watched it behave. Name the exact switch (e.g. Alpaca ALPACA_PAPER_TRADE=true; Kraken paper scope on, trade scope off).
• Where the server supports it, leave the trading tools out entirely server-side (e.g. Alpaca ALPACA_TOOLSETS) if the user only needs data.
• Prefer draft-first execution when available. For full automation, hand off to ghost-auto-trader and keep an explicit approval gate.
• For portfolio reads feeding analysis, hand off to portfolio-manager.

Step 5: State the risks plainly

Before any live connection, surface these (don't bury them):

• Prompt injection reaches your account. If the agent reads a webpage, email, or Discord message, hostile text is one hop from an order once it also holds a trading tool.
• Separate the brain from the hands. Analysis and execution don't have to be — and arguably shouldn't be — the same connector.
• Paper first, for longer than feels necessary. Nothing here is battle-tested at the level your money assumes.

Reference Files

references/brokers.md

• When: matching a need to a broker, or checking trade-capability / safety posture.
• Contains: a condensed, attributed snapshot of the awesome-broker-mcp directory — official/community/aggregator servers, what each trades, local vs. remote, and safety posture. Always cross-check the live list before finalizing.

Relationship to the rest of the suite

Limitations and Disclaimers

This skill helps you choose and connect tooling. It is not financial advice and not an endorsement of any broker or server. Community servers are third-party code that will hold your broker credentials — read them, check the last commit, and assume the maintainer may walk away. Verify every capability against the source before connecting to real money.