Canary

A local risk desk for your brokerage account.

It runs with Interactive Brokers today, through IB Gateway or TWS, and keeps the broker layer in its own Go package, pkg/ibkr, so other brokers can follow.

Canary turns one local IB Gateway or TWS session into a daily brief, current portfolio and market evidence, and a broker-confirmed review of what past position changes delivered. Use the same daemon from an MCP host, the shell, or a paired phone. The standard binary cannot place, change or cancel an order; it can preview one, which asks the gateway for a what-if check and creates no order. No MCP tool can preview or execute an order in any build.

Canary is for an IBKR Pro user who runs Gateway or TWS locally and wants stale, missing, or held evidence to remain visible. It is not a hosted brokerage service, a trade recommender, or a complete TWS API replacement. If you only need a Go wire-protocol client, use pkg/ibkr. To read a running Canary from your own Go program, import the module root github.com/osauer/canary/v2: it runs the same read-only tool catalogue over the daemon socket, and canarytest serves the wire types on a temporary socket for tests. The client also exposes a narrow audited cash-sweep ordering preference; its tool catalogue remains read-only and the preference cannot activate reserves or broker execution.

Documentation · Install · First session · Canary Edge · MCP tools · Safety · Privacy

Start

You need IB Gateway 10.37+ or TWS with API socket access enabled, an IBKR Pro account, and macOS or Linux on arm64 or amd64. WSL works; native Windows does not.

For one binary shared by the shell and local MCP hosts:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/osauer/canary/main/install.sh | sh
canary status    # prove which gateway and account Canary reached
canary brief     # review what changed and what needs attention

The installer verifies the signed release checksum and installs to ~/.local/bin. The install guide shows how to inspect the script first and covers every other installation path. Canary can discover Gateway or TWS automatically; canary status identifies the selected connection and account. An explicit endpoint pin remains fixed. Market-data availability depends on your IBKR subscriptions: delayed values stay labeled and cannot satisfy live-only execution requirements.

For Claude Desktop only, download canary.mcpb, open it with Claude Desktop, then quit Claude completely and relaunch it. Ask:

What needs attention today, and which inputs are degraded?

The bundle carries its own macOS and Linux binaries. The Claude Desktop walkthrough covers the first connection.

Current Canary SPA rendered from synthetic data. Edge reports observed historical outcomes; it is not a forecast or a causal claim.

Reduction plans compare both index directions, loss room and quoted trading costs. An index-hedge plan sizes whole Micro E-mini contracts; a plan does not submit an order. Protection and reduction planning explains the figures and their limits.

Choose your surface

You want to…	Start with	Boundary
Ask an agent about the account	The MCP Bundle, or canary mcp from any local framework that can launch a stdio MCP server	Read-only tools; no settings writes, previews, or execution tools
Work in a terminal or script	canary brief, canary positions --by underlying, and --json	Deterministic CLI output over the same daemon authority
Check the desk from a phone	canary app, then canary app pair	Paired PWA; local by default, optional remote relay
Read Canary from your own Go program	github.com/osauer/canary/v2, the daemon client, with canarytest for tests	The MCP tool catalogue over the daemon socket without an MCP process; the daemon keeps every policy and broker gate
Build directly on the TWS protocol	github.com/osauer/canary/v2/pkg/ibkr	Lower-level transport; your application owns policy, authorization, and journaling

Constrained broker actions are not a fifth onboarding path. They require a separate experimental trading binary and remain limited to gated CLI and paired-app flows. MCP stays read-only in every build. Read Gated orders and the trading build before using that artifact.

What Canary helps you answer

• What needs attention now? canary brief, the Rulebook, and the Action Queue combine current alerts, process exceptions, protection candidates, and exercise candidates without turning any row into submit authority.
• Am I within my limits? canary rules checks the book against limits for position size, premium budget, time value, expiry, losses, net market exposure and margin headroom. They start from a compiled baseline; canary rules policy set makes them yours.
• How is the book exposed? Account and position reads identify one selected account, group stock and option legs by underlying, and keep missing values separate from real zeros. Each position carries the listing venue IBKR reports. Multi-account ambiguity is refused rather than blended.
• What did past decisions actually deliver? Canary Edge uses retained IBKR Flex records and exact-contract market history. It reviews account P/L after confirmed external flows, compares adequately repeated stock and ETF opens/adds/trims/exits with leaving the prior position unchanged over 1, 5, and 20 sessions, and reports broker-recorded option P/L separately. It does not infer intent, recommend a trade, or claim causation.
• What did stock lending earn? Dated shares-lent annotations and canary lending fees --json provide customer net fees, expandable history and explicit report coverage. IBKR controls participation. Fees explain income; they are never added again to broker account P/L. Payment linkage remains unproved. See lending reporting.
• What high-fee names are outside my list? canary lending screen --min-rate 50 --limit 25 --json and MCP canary_lending_screen rank the existing IBKR US USD bulk feed. Optional exclusions remove familiar names; coverage, source dates and truncation stay explicit. This does not establish listing quality, liquidity or lender yield.
• Which US equities have large reported short positions? canary short-interest screen --listed-only --min-average-volume 1000000 --json ranks FINRA short shares before limiting results. Sort by days_to_cover or add the shared price/liquidity filters; market coverage is explicit and free-float percentage remains unavailable. See source and freshness semantics.
• Where are borrowing fees unusually high? and MCP read dated indicative borrower costs for an explicit US-stock universe. Preserve missing data, source age and numeric scale. These rates are research inputs, not your lending yield or a buy recommendation. See .

Reconciliation, statement-derived equity, and Edge require one shared IBKR Activity Flex Query. Run canary setup reporting, then follow the screenshot-driven field checklist. A received empty section counts as zero reported activity and does not block readiness. Missing sections and missing required fields on populated rows remain distinct problems; canary reporting status --json shows the current evidence.

MCP and agent frameworks

The MCP Bundle is the shortest Claude Desktop path. For another local host, install the shared binary and point the host at its absolute path. Hosts that use the common mcpServers shape accept:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "canary": {
      "command": "/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/canary",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Use which canary to find the path. A browser-only agent cannot reach this local stdio process. After upgrading, fully relaunch the host so it respawns the MCP server.

Continuously running agents can keep this MCP child process available and reuse Canary's brief, calendar, regime, risk, and order evidence. Use canary_calendar for official exchange sessions, canary_macro for official economic calendars and publications, and canary_data_health for passive source health. Preserve their coverage bounds and original source times. The host owns durable wakeups, model budgets, and process recovery. Canary owns the observations and risk semantics. See continuous hosts for the lifecycle and data-quality contract.

Ask in desk language rather than naming tools:

How is my portfolio exposed by underlying?

Which repeated entries, adds, trims, or exits had the largest observed 20-session price impact, and what coverage bounds that answer?

Are any protection or exercise candidates ready for human review?

The host guide covers Claude Code, Cursor, Continue, Zed, framework integration, logs, and connection checks. The generated MCP reference is the exact tool and schema inventory. The optional Claude Code plugin adds Canary's skill, MCP config, and safety hooks; it does not ship the binary.

Shell and paired app

Every data command supports --json:

canary data health
canary account
canary positions --by underlying
canary brief
canary edge
canary rules
canary regime --explain
canary stress --details
canary technical SPY,QQQ
canary calendar --market us --days 14
canary macro
canary market
canary reporting status
canary proposals list
canary opportunities list
canary orders open

For a continuous display, canary market --watch --json streams broker updates with explicit account scope and separate source clocks. One-day charts retain the last applicable session across weekends and closures; retained bars keep their actual dates.

Run canary status first for connection problems and canary data health for missing or degraded inputs. canary --help and the CLI reference carry the complete command and flag inventory.

For the paired app, run canary app on the machine that owns the Gateway or TWS session, then run canary app pair and scan the QR code. The current workspace is Monitor, Positions, Edge, Alerts, and Orders; Settings opens from the header gear. See the app guide for local pairing, remote-relay, and Web Push boundaries.

Go wire-protocol library

pkg/ibkr is a clean-room Go client for the TWS wire protocol:

import (
    "context"
    "time"

    "github.com/osauer/canary/v2/pkg/ibkr"
)

func accountSummary(ctx context.Context, clientID int) (*ibkr.RawAccountSummary, error) {
    cfg := ibkr.DefaultConfig()
    cfg.Port = 4002 // Gateway paper

    connector := ibkr.NewConnector(&ibkr.ConnectorConfig{
        // Use an ID not already owned by Canary or another TWS client.
        PreferredClientID: clientID,
        BaseConfig:        cfg,
    })
    if err := connector.Start(ctx); err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }
    defer connector.Stop()

    return connector.RequestAccountSummary(ctx, 5*time.Second)
}

Protocol coverage is purpose-driven, not exhaustive. The package transports broker requests but does not provide Canary's application-level authority boundary. Direct users must supply their own policy, authorization, journaling, and reconciliation controls. Start with the package documentation.

The public Go module deliberately remains on the maintained /v2 line while product v3 ships as signed binaries. Therefore go install github.com/osauer/canary/v2/cmd/canary@latest installs the v2 CLI, not product v3.

One authority, several adapters

shell, MCP host, or paired app
              ↓ local Unix socket
         canary daemon
              ↓ local TCP by default
       IB Gateway or TWS

The daemon starts on demand, owns the selected account, broker connection, market evidence, policy state, and local order journal, and normally exits after 15 idle minutes. Adapters render typed daemon results; they do not re-create risk policy. Official public-data sources also feed the daemon; embedded exchange calendars remain available without a broker connection. The architecture and storage guide describe the boundaries and the retained ibkr XDG paths used for upgrade continuity.

Safety and privacy

• Read-only is the normal product. The installer, updater, and MCP Bundle select the standard binary, which has no broker-write path compiled in. Its CLI can still preview an order; the preview creates no order, and this build refuses to place it.
• MCP has no preview or execution tools in any build. It cannot place, modify, cancel, submit, or exercise an order.
• Trading is a separate decision. The experimental trading artifact keeps actions behind a pinned, broker-confirmed account, pinned client ID and trading mode, any explicit endpoint pin, a fresh exact review contract, broker eligibility where applicable, healthy journaling, daemon revalidation, runtime freeze, and transaction-specific human authority.
• Missing evidence stays missing. A stale or unavailable input never becomes a clean result merely because an older value exists.

Canary has no telemetry and does not send account IDs, balances, quantities, or P/L to the maintainer. Configured public-data refreshes, an MCP host, remote relay, or push service receive only the data disclosed in the path you enable. PRIVACY.md is the authoritative data map; SECURITY.md covers the threat model and signed release artifacts.

Help and project information

• Install and first run
• Daily desk workflow
• Troubleshooting
• Configuration
• Release and update policy
• Contributing

Canary is an independent third-party client for Interactive Brokers' publicly documented TWS API. It is not built, endorsed, sponsored, or supported by Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. or its affiliates. pkg/ibkr redistributes no Interactive Brokers code, libraries, jars, or market data. Nothing here is investment advice.

Canary is a private project of Oliver Sauer.

MIT. See LICENSE.

FX contribution is available through canary reporting fx and the read-only canary_reporting_fx MCP tool. See FX contribution and backfill for daily evidence, reconciliation, query fields and Day/Week/Month/YTD semantics.

Lending price and liquidity context

canary lending market --symbols AAA,BBB --json and the read-only canary_lending_market MCP tool return matching cached context for 1–100 explicit USD names in the borrowing feed, or exact identities already resolved for a displayed research row. Named reads do not initiate missing-feed resolution; without either identity, the row remains unavailable. The daemon admits at most 150 background unattempted names per research family, then progressively admits more on later reads. A single joined worker rotates families and refreshes one name at a time on the background lane (35-second bound). Up to 30,000 exact-contract projections are retained while requested, expiring after 24 hours without interest. Named reads request quotes for 15 minutes; intraday receipts expire after five minutes. Completed-session history is reused until the next completed session, preserving its actual source dates. Incomplete histories retry hourly; failures retry after five minutes, except that a name IBKR does not recognise as a contract reads unavailable and waits at least 30 minutes and until the broker session changes. History uses the durable cache without adding chart-refresh interests. No quote fan-out occurs in a screen read.

Rows carry last completed close or a recent actual trade (including delayed-feed labels), change from prior close, session share volume, average daily dollar turnover over all 20 completed sessions, and completed-close YTD price change from the exact prior year-end session. YTD excludes dividends; missing year-end, latest session or any volume baseline stays missing. Field dates and pending, partial, unavailable and expiry remain explicit. Filters are research preferences, not trading policy or a liquidity guarantee. Discovery filters apply across the full qualifying fee/exclusion universe before the output limit, using only known market values. Acquisition is progressive: inspect coverage before interpreting an empty or partial screen. covered, pending and unavailable partition all candidates; complete requires every candidate to have the fields needed by the query (default price and turnover). Missing YTD does not block price-only filters. Desk's own-list view retains its separate named-rate/local filtering path so nonbulk evidence is not silently dropped.

Canonical discovery filters and sorting

canary lending screen --min-rate 50 --min-price 5 --min-avg-dollar-volume-20d 10000000 --min-high-dates 3 --sort-by avg_dollar_volume_20d --sort-dir desc --limit 50 --json

CLI flags map directly to MCP/RPC min_price, min_avg_dollar_volume_20d, min_high_dates, sort_by, and sort_dir. Zero disables each optional filter. Sort keys are symbol, price, day_change_pct, volume, avg_dollar_volume_20d, ytd_change_pct, fee_rate, and high_dates. Missing numeric values stay last in both directions; symbols break ties. high_dates is the number of distinct provider dates at or above min_rate within seven UTC source dates, reset by a later lower or unknown observation. An intraday dip followed by recovery starts a new streak on that date. Each row also exposes at most seven dated history samples for the fee chart. Repeated polls of one timestamp never add dates. This history is persisted with the daemon's borrow-fee source state; it starts from genuine retained observations, not an assumed backfill. Old installations therefore initially know one date.

Displayed research prices

The returned discovery rows receive bounded priority in their displayed order: at most 100 names per family, including a source-ranked discovery tail so filters do not cancel unresolved candidates, with a 15-minute interest replaced by the next query. Three foreground jobs alternate with one available background job, preserving broader-universe progress. A newly displayed name can enter even when the 150-name background batch is full; changing tabs does not accumulate unresolved jobs.

Displayed short-interest symbols missing from the borrowing file may resolve through one session-bound IBKR contract-details request. Only a unique exact symbol, positive contract ID, USD stock type and supported US calendar qualify. No suffix conversion, guessed common-share substitute or issuer-name matching is performed. Non-displayed unmatched names remain unavailable; the full FINRA universe does not trigger a contract-resolution scan.

A short daily-history read supplies the dated last completed close first; the one-year history then fills remaining liquidity and YTD context. A dated regular close from the canonical quote may also supply price. Undated previous-close ticks and old last trades never receive an invented current date. Missing or failed yearly history preserves matching completed-session price and independently dated fields. Borrowing fees remain independent: resolving a price does not create a fee quote.