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Use the tradeSteward API From Your Own Code

Last updated November 4, 2026

The tradeSteward User API lets your own programs read your bots and Backtick results, build and edit bots, and run Backticks.

This guide takes you from nothing to a working program in six short steps, listed below. The dense reference, the OpenAPI document and the sample programs are on the Developers page.

What you need

  • A plan that includes API access. Every Trader plan includes API access to bots: reading them, creating them, editing bots that are not live, and pausing and resuming trading. Turning bots on and off and editing live bots through the API need Trader Unlimited. Backtick Professional includes API access to Backticks. See Choose a Plan.
  • The Connected Apps page, in your account menu, where you create the credential your program uses.
  • A program that can send HTTPS requests and read JSON. The guide's examples use curl and Python.

How it fits together

  1. You create an API client on Connected Apps, choose what it may do, and copy its id and secret. The API acts only on the account that created the client.
  2. Your program exchanges the id and secret for an access token that lasts one hour, and sends the token on every request.
  3. Its first call asks what the client may do. From there it reads your bots and Backticks, builds bots and runs Backticks, as far as the client's permissions allow.
  4. It handles refusals by their code, waits when it is told to, and never repeats a change by accident.
  5. When it asks to turn a bot on, change a live bot or resume trading, it waits for you to approve.

Your program can also follow a Backtick run, or your bots' trades, as they happen instead of asking again and again. Running Backticks and Following a Run and Following Bot Events as They Happen explain how.

Staying in control

  • A bot the API creates is always saved switched off. A client can turn a bot on, edit a live bot or resume trading only if you give it that permission, and by default each of those requests waits for your approval. A Multi-Entry bot is never turned on through the API: you turn it on yourself.
  • Account limits on the Connected Apps page block a permission for every connection and API client at once.
  • A client can be limited to certain broker accounts, or to the bots it created.
  • Recent activity on the Connected Apps page shows what each client has done. Times are US Eastern.
  • If your password, passkey or two-factor settings change, every API client is suspended until you turn it back on.
  • Rotating a client's secret, suspending it or deleting it ends every access token it holds at once.

The steps

Read these in order the first time. Each one links to the next.

  1. Use the tradeSteward API From Your Own CodeWhat the User API lets your programs do, what you need, how the pieces fit together, how you stay in control, and the six steps of this guide.
  2. Create an API ClientCreate an API client on Connected Apps, choose its permissions, copy its id and one-time secret, set its limits, and rotate the secret or delete the client later.
  3. User API: Authentication and Access TokensExchange an API client's id and secret for a one-hour access token, send it as a bearer token, and handle refusals, expiry, ending a token early, suspension and the required notices.
  4. Your First RequestMake your first call, GET /me, and learn the rules every request and answer follows: addresses, request bodies, the JSON envelope, money and times, paging and compressed answers.
  5. Errors, Retries and Rate LimitsEvery User API error code with its HTTP status, which ones to retry, the rate-limit headers, Idempotency-Key and If-Match, and why stopping a bot or pausing trading always works.
  6. User API: Approving Requests That Start TradingWhat happens when an API client or a connected AI app asks to turn a bot on, change a live bot, resume trading or pause trading: the 202 answer, how you approve on tradeSteward, expiry, states and the pending-actions endpoints.

Using an AI assistant instead

To connect Claude, ChatGPT or Codex without writing code, see Connect tradeSteward to Claude, ChatGPT or Codex.

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