What is Day Trader skill?
The Day Trader skill is a pack of 11 Claude skills with standard-library Python tools behind them. They scan about 5,900 US stocks for setups such as opening-range breakouts, pull headlines and SEC 8-K filings, watch a setup bar by bar, set a stop and a target, size a position to a budget, check it against risk limits, raise price alerts, summarise earnings filings and read congressional trade disclosures. A Time Machine skill replays the rest of a session 10,000 times from the stock's own recent 5-minute bars and re-runs the rule on past sessions.
One skill, trader-broker, can lead to a real order. It writes a ticket; Claude then sends it through Alpaca's own MCP server, which uses a paper account by default, or drafts it through the Interactive Brokers connector, where you approve it again inside IBKR. Data comes from free, unofficial sources: Yahoo Finance's chart endpoint, Nasdaq Trader symbol lists, SEC EDGAR and the House Clerk.
The repository is MIT licensed, needs Python 3.8 or newer and nothing from pip. It is not financial advice, and neither is this review.
Is Day Trader skill worth it?
Be clear first about what this pack can do with money. With Alpaca paper keys, nothing real happens. With live Alpaca keys, Claude can place real buy and sell orders for US stocks in your account, including bracket orders with a stop-loss and take-profit, sized by your config: the shipped defaults are a $5,000 budget, $4,000 per order at most, a $50 loss per trade, $150 a day and 3 trades a day. Options, margin and short selling are off unless you switch them on. With Interactive Brokers, Claude drafts the order and you approve it again inside IBKR. This is not financial advice, and the README says the same, adding that most people who day trade lose money.
The safeguards are thought through. An order needs a PASS from the risk skill, a typed yes for that exact order, and a click on Claude's own Allow once card. The ticket script never talks to a broker. But only the last gate is enforced by software you control: the first two are instructions the model is asked to follow. The setting that matters is the one the README insists on, leaving place_stock_order on Needs approval and never Always allow.
The analysis is honest about itself. In the README's worked example, a Tesla opening-range breakout on 19 October 2026, the Time Machine gives 29.4% target first, 25.5% stop first and 45.1% still open at the close, and the same rule on 59 past sessions fired 33 times: 13 hit the target, 15 the stop and 5 neither. The tests run offline on recorded data and reproduce those numbers.
The catch: the data is unofficial and delayed, Yahoo's endpoint can change or rate-limit you without notice, and bars are 1 or 5 minutes, not ticks, which matters most in exactly the fast markets day traders chase. Congressional disclosures can arrive up to 45 days after the trade, so reading them the minute they are filed is still reading old news. The repository is one commit from 20 October 2026, with 7,747 stars and 1,864 forks and no change since.
Our take: run it on paper for a month and treat the Time Machine's odds as the result. If the edge it shows you is near a coin flip, the skill has done its job by keeping your money where it was.
Where it earns its place
A retail trader with a $5,000 account learning intraday setups
Check whether opening-range breakouts on a stock actually pay before trying one
Run the scanner at 10:15, then the Time Machine on a hit. It replays the session 10,000 times and re-runs the rule on 59 past sessions, all on free data, before any order exists.
A software engineer who trades part-time
Paper trade a rules-based plan through Claude for a month
Connect Alpaca's MCP server with paper keys, keep order tools on Needs approval, and let trader-budget and trader-risk size and check each bracket order. Paper trading costs nothing.
A financial journalist covering congressional trading
See new House stock-trade disclosures for named members as they are filed
Run trader-pelosi on a schedule to index and read new periodic transaction reports from the House Clerk; no brokerage connection is needed for this skill.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Paste the repository URL into Claude and ask it to install the skill, or add it as a Claude Code plugin; set an SEC user agent with your name and email for the filing tools. Order placement also needs Alpaca's MCP server or the IBKR connector.
- Integrations
- Claude and Claude Code; Alpaca's official MCP server (paper by default) or the Interactive Brokers connector for orders; Yahoo Finance, Nasdaq Trader, SEC EDGAR and the House Clerk for data.
- Data and privacy
- State lives in a trader/ folder in your project: orders, plans, risk verdicts and a broker log. Broker keys go in environment variables in the MCP config, and the skill tells Claude never to ask for them in chat.
- Limits
- US equities only; 1- and 5-minute bars, not ticks; stop orders can fill past their price in fast markets; the Time Machine samples only the last 60 days of bars.
What’s good
- Order path needs a risk PASS, a typed yes and Claude's Allow once card
- Paper trading by default; options, margin and shorting off
- Time Machine replays 10,000 sessions and re-tests the rule on past days
- Offline test suite reproduces every number in the worked example
- Standard-library Python, no pip installs or API keys for data
What’s not
- Two of the three order gates are model instructions, not enforced code
- Free Yahoo Finance data is unofficial and can lag or break
- One commit since 20 October 2026
- US stocks only, at 1- or 5-minute resolution
Best for
Retail traders who use Claude and want a structured, paper-first way to test intraday ideas against history before risking any money.
Day Trader skill alternatives
Day Trader skill: common questions
- Is Day Trader skill worth it?
- A careful, well-tested day-trading toolkit whose own Time Machine calls its headline trade a coin flip, which is the most useful thing it will tell you. We rate it 3.4 out of 5.
- How much does Day Trader skill cost?
- Free under MIT. Needs a Claude plan for the skills; data sources are free. Trading costs are your broker's: Alpaca paper trading is free, and live trading puts your own money at risk.
- What are the downsides of Day Trader skill?
- Two of the three order gates are model instructions, not enforced code; free Yahoo Finance data is unofficial and can lag or break; one commit since 20 October 2026; uS stocks only, at 1- or 5-minute resolution.
- Who is Day Trader skill best for?
- Retail traders who use Claude and want a structured, paper-first way to test intraday ideas against history before risking any money.
- Is Day Trader skill safe for company data?
- State lives in a trader/ folder in your project: orders, plans, risk verdicts and a broker log. Broker keys go in environment variables in the MCP config, and the skill tells Claude never to ask for them in chat.
- What are the best Day Trader skill alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are Vibe-Trading and TradingAgents.
Answers checked Nov 14, 2026.