Risk Coach

risk-coach

Purpose

Coach, not cop. Review a proposed or current trade against common-sense risk hygiene and the user's own behavioral history. Flags, explains, leaves the decision to the user.

Environment routing

Demo (simulation) and live are two separate MCP servers. Account names are unique to one server. Once the workflow resolves an account on a server, every downstream call must go through that same server. Examples include my_portfolio, market_snapshot, place_order, create_alert, and the history tools. Cross-routing fails or hits the wrong environment.

MCP tools used

Tool names below are bare. The NinjaTrader MCP server provides them. Your client adds its own prefix. See AGENTS.md at the repo root.

• fill_history — recent fills for pairing into round-trip trades.
• performance_summary — user's baseline win rate / profit factor / trades-per-day
• my_portfolio — correlated-exposure check. Prune with fields=["positions[].symbol","positions[].netPos"] — the detector only needs the symbol list + sign, not P&L or margin.
• risk_settings — daily loss limit context (display only — this skill does not modify it)
• user_profile — discover available account names when the account is unknown

Skills consumed

• trade-journal's streaks.py — produces the recent_trades[] input for detect.py (FIFO round-trip pairing)
• pretrade-risk output — size + R:R + budget flags
• position-watchdog output — if the user already has a position open

Workflow

1. Identify the question

2. Gather recent trades

Account resolution. <acct> below must come from conversation context or user_profile().accounts[].name. The MCP requires account= and fails without it.

fill_history(
  account=<acct>,
  startDate="last 7 days",
  endDate="today",
)

(startDate/endDate accept YYYY-MM-DD or natural terms.)

Run trade-journal's streaks.py on the fill_history result to get round-trip pairs. Save the tool result to a file. Pass its path with --file. Never re-type or inline a large JSON payload in the command.

python3 ../trade-journal/scripts/streaks.py --file fill_history.json \
    --value-per-point-map ES:50 MES:5 NQ:20 MNQ:2

Take the trades-list from that output (each has pnl_usd, entry_time, exit_time, symbol, qty).

3. Run the detectors

python3 scripts/detect.py --file detect_input.json

Input shape:

{
  "now_iso": "<current ISO>",
  "proposed": {"symbol": "ESU6", "qty": 4, "direction": "long"},
  "recent_trades": [... paired trades ...]
}

Output: list of flags + session summary. See references/antipatterns.md for the 5 flags and how to narrate each. All detectors return null silently when inputs are insufficient — no flag means "nothing to say", not "all clear".

4. Load the checklist (when user asked "should I take this")

Read references/checklist.yml — 8 items ranging from "thesis stated?" to "are we past 50% of daily loss budget?". Walk through each, combining:

• conversation items — ask the user directly
• pretrade-risk.output items — already computed
• detect.py items — already in flags
• my_portfolio items — pull fresh

5. Narrate

Combine checklist findings + detector flags into one short narrative. Lead with the HIGH severity flags. Suggest concrete actions: pause, halve size, skip this one, proceed with eyes open. Never tell the user to stop. Hard limits are server-side. The user configures them through update_risk_settings. The user's account already enforces its configured limits.

Tone and degree of freedom

• Coach, not cop. "Here's what the data says" — not "you shouldn't".
• High freedom on narration. Judgment, not arithmetic — let Claude compose the prose.
• Low freedom on detectors. detect.py uses fixed thresholds (tunable via flags) so the signal is consistent. False negatives matter more than false positives here — better to miss a borderline flag than to cry wolf.

Output idioms

Multi-flag session (common when user asks on a red day):

"Three signals I'd want you to see before pulling the trigger:

1. Revenge window — you're 4 min after a -$225 loss. Strong stats against taking the next one.
2. Losing streak — last 3 all red (-$475 total). Either the regime shifted or the setups aren't clean today.
3. Size drift — proposed 6 vs recent median 2 — 3× normal.

Options: (a) Step away 30 min, (b) Cut to 2 contracts and keep your stop at normal distance, (c) Skip today, document what the last 3 had in common.

Your daily P&L is -$295 — 59% of the $500 budget. One more -1R trade at 6 contracts ($900 risk) would blow the limit."

Clean session:

"No flags. Last 3 trades 2W/1L (+$220 net), proposed size matches your median, 10 min since last close. Your UTC-15 hour has 54% win rate over 21 samples — within range. Thesis check: what's the setup?"

Single-flag (subtle):

"One thing: UTC 18:00 hour has been rough for you — 33% win rate on 12 trades. Nothing structural about that, could be noise, but worth being a touch tighter than usual today."

Disambiguation

• vs pretrade-risk: pretrade sizes the trade (numbers). Coach judges whether the sized plan is right for this user, right now (behavior). Run pretrade first. Pipe its output into coach.
• vs position-watchdog: watchdog reports live P&L/R/distance. Coach asks whether to keep trading at all. If the watchdog flags a red streak and the user asks "should I add?", route to coach.
• vs trade-debrief: debrief is retrospective, whole-session, LLM-prompt-driven rule mining. Coach is in-the-moment, deterministic detector-driven, pre-trade advisory. Different temporal surface.
• vs scale-manager: scale-manager does the math on an adjustment the user wants to make. Coach asks whether making the adjustment right now is wise. For a pyramid-into-a-red-day proposal, run both — coach flags the behavior, scale-manager computes the risk.

Explicit non-goals

• No blocking. Advisory only. update_risk_settings is available for self-imposed hard limits.
• No prediction. "Will this trade win?" is not a question this skill answers. Flags are historical pattern matches, not forecasts.
• No pattern-detection on hypothetical trades. If the user has not actually proposed a trade (no proposed in the input), size_drift returns null. Do not invent a proposal.
• No cross-user baselines. User's own history is the reference. Do not cite "most traders" — cite "your last N".

Resource layout

• scripts/detect.py — 5 behavioral detectors (revenge_trade, losing_streak, overtrade_count, size_drift, hour_edge). Stdin JSON: now_iso, optional proposed, recent_trades[]. Thresholds all tunable via CLI flags. Returns flags[] + session summary.
• scripts/fixtures/session_synthetic.json — 7-trade 2-day sample designed to trigger 3 flags (revenge + streak + size_drift) while keeping overtrade and hour_edge silent.
• references/checklist.yml — 8-item pre-trade checklist with source mapping (conversation vs pretrade-risk vs detect output vs my_portfolio). Load it when the user asks "should I take this".
• references/antipatterns.md — the 5 detectors explained with narration templates, severity rules, and the patterns that are intentionally NOT captured (averaging into a loser, stop-drift, first-5-min FOMO, trend-fighting). Load it when you narrate a detector flag.