Engineering Labs / Agentic Trading (MCP)
LAB-02 · Educational Engineering Experiment

Agentic Trading (MCP).

A hands-on demonstration of the newest agentic protocols: connecting a local Claude model to a broker's official Model Context Protocol server, and giving it a rules engine that reacts to market-data signals — run entirely in a simulated environment.

■ Strictly Educational Prototype

This project is a technical demonstration of Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations and agentic workflows using a broker's Paper Trading (simulated) environment. It is not financial advice, and the underlying logic is not a recommended trading strategy. Anyone attempting to implement automated trading systems with real capital assumes all financial and legal risk.

01 · The Experiment

Can an agent operate a real protocol, safely?

When brokers began shipping official MCP servers, it opened a clean way to let an AI agent read structured market data and take defined actions through a sanctioned interface — instead of brittle scraping. The experiment: wire that up end to end, encode a strict rules engine, and run the whole thing against simulated (paper) trades to study agentic behavior with zero real-money exposure.

02 · The Architecture

Local model → MCP → rules engine.

  1. Local Claude modelThe reasoning layer runs locally and speaks MCP — no bespoke API glue, just the standard protocol the broker publishes.
  2. Broker MCP server (paper environment)The official MCP server exposes market data and simulated order actions. Every action in this build targets the paper-trading sandbox.
  3. Signal-driven rules engineA written ruleset defines what the agent may do: which signals/triggers to watch, position sizing bounds, and the specific conditions under which a simulated buy or sell is allowed — the model acts only inside those guardrails.
Claude (local)Model Context ProtocolAgentic workflowRules enginePaper trading (simulated)
03 · Why It Matters For Clients

Strip away the domain and this is a governed agent: a model given a real external system, a hard ruleset, and clear boundaries on what it's permitted to do. That is exactly the pattern behind safe business automation — an agent that can act on live systems only within explicit guardrails. This build is where I proved I can stand that up on a brand-new protocol the week it shipped.

Want an agent that acts — safely — inside your systems?

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