How to set up the Trader Skill in Claude, step by step

What the Trader Skill is

It's a pack of 11 skills for Claude, made by Jake Schincariol and published free on GitHub under the MIT licence. Each skill is a set of instructions plus a small Python tool that reads public data, so there's nothing to sign up for and no API key to buy.

The skills hand work to each other through a trader/ folder in your project: one copies an investor's portfolio, the next sizes it to your budget, the next checks it against your limits, and the last turns an approved order into a ticket for your broker.

The 11 skills

• /trader-copycat (Reverse Engineer): reads an investor's 13F filing on SEC EDGAR and rebuilds their portfolio as weights you can copy, with what they bought, added, trimmed and sold since last quarter.
• /trader-news (News Monitor): watches headlines and SEC 8-K filings for every stock you hold and flags what touches them.
• /trader-budget (Budget Manager): sizes every position to your budget, keeps a cash buffer and caps any one stock.
• /trader-pelosi (Pelosi Tracker): reads the stock trades members of the US House disclose, as soon as the filings post, and alerts you once per new filing.
• /trader-analyst (Earnings Analyst): pulls each company's reported revenue, net income, diluted EPS, margins and growth from SEC filings, plus its latest earnings release.
• /trader-screener (Stock Screener): screens companies against your own rules and ranks what passes.
• /trader-risk (Risk Manager): checks every proposed order against your limits and blocks anything over them.
• /trader-broker (Order Executor): turns an approved order into the exact ticket your brokerage connector receives, and records your yes. It never places anything by itself.
• /trader-tax (Tax Optimizer): tracks cost-basis lots, gains and losses, tax-loss harvesting candidates and wash sales.
• /trader-alerts (Price Alerts): rings when a price target, a stop or the opening bell hits, using the real NYSE calendar.
• /trader-rebalance (Rebalancer): brings the portfolio back to its target weights when it drifts past your band.

Step 1

Install the skill

The quickest way, from the repo's own instructions: paste this into Claude and send it.

https://github.com/Jakeschincariol/trader-skill

install skill

Or install it as a plugin in Claude Code

In Claude Code, run these two commands. Installed this way the skills are namespaced, so they show up as /trader-skill:trader-copycat and so on.

/plugin marketplace add Jakeschincariol/trader-skill
/plugin install trader-skill@trader-skill

The copy-the-folders version

git clone https://github.com/Jakeschincariol/trader-skill.git
cp -r trader-skill/trader-* ~/.claude/skills/

Step 2

Set your name, budget and limits

SEC asks every script that reads its data to say who it is, so put your name and email in sec_user_agent (or in an SEC_USER_AGENT environment variable). Then set your budget and limits. This is the repo's example config: save it as trader/config.json in your project and change the numbers to yours.

{
  "budget": 5000,
  "cash_buffer_pct": 10,
  "max_position_pct": 25,
  "max_order_usd": 2000,
  "min_order_usd": 5,
  "max_orders_per_day": 10,
  "fractional": true,
  "broker": "alpaca",
  "paper": true,
  "blocked": [],
  "allow_options": false,
  "allow_margin": false,
  "allow_short": false,
  "sec_user_agent": "Your Name you@example.com"
}

Step 3

Run your first research: copy an investor

The repo's own walk-through copies Berkshire Hathaway with $5,000. Copycat finds the fund, reads its latest 13F and writes trader/targets.json. Budget turns that into dollar amounts with your buffer and cap, and writes the orders as proposals. Risk then checks each one and answers PASS or BLOCK, with the reason.

/trader-copycat copy Berkshire Hathaway's top 5 holdings
/trader-budget size them to a $5,000 budget with a 10% cash buffer and a 25% cap
/trader-risk check these orders against my limits

Step 4

Watch the news, Congress and your prices

These three are made to run on a schedule: news on what you hold, new congressional disclosures, and your price levels. Try them by hand first.

/trader-news what's in the news for the stocks I hold, last 24 hours
/trader-pelosi any new congressional stock disclosures since yesterday?
/trader-alerts alert me if AAPL drops below 200

Step 5

Optional: connect a broker, on paper first

Only /trader-broker can lead to an order, and only after /trader-risk passes that exact order and you type yes for it. The repo's setup uses Alpaca's official MCP server in Claude Desktop, on a paper (practice) account by default.

1. Make an Alpaca account and create paper trading API keys in the Alpaca dashboard. Paper keys are separate from live keys.
2. Install uv (it provides uvx) from docs.astral.sh/uv.
3. In Claude Desktop, open Settings, then Developer, then Edit Config, and add the block below with your own paper keys typed into the file.
4. Restart Claude Desktop.
5. In Claude, set the brokerage tools to "Needs approval" (Customize, Connectors, tool permissions), never "Always allow", so Claude asks you once more before any order.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alpaca": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["alpaca-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "ALPACA_API_KEY": "your PAPER key, typed here, never in the chat",
        "ALPACA_SECRET_KEY": "your PAPER secret, typed here, never in the chat",
        "ALPACA_PAPER_TRADE": "true",
        "ALPACA_TOOLSETS": "account,trading,stock-data"
      }
    }
  }
}

Before you trust it with money

• It's not financial advice. In its author's words, it's software that reads public data and does arithmetic: it doesn't know your situation and can't see the future. You can lose money.
• Stay on paper until you've watched it work for a while. Paper trading is the default in both the config and Alpaca's server.
• Check anything that matters against your broker. Some data comes from free sources, including Yahoo Finance's chart endpoint, which is unofficial and can change.
• Congress's trades are public disclosures, filed up to 45 days after the trade, not inside information.
• /trader-tax does the arithmetic on lots and wash sales. It isn't tax advice.

Sources

• The Trader Skill on GitHub (README) (install steps, the 11 skills, config and fine print, read 10 November 2026)
• trader-broker/SKILL.md (the Alpaca paper-trading setup and the three approval gates)
• Alpaca's MCP server
• SEC: accessing EDGAR data (why scripts must identify themselves)