Safeguards: Confirmation, Limits and Scope
Permissions say what one connection may do. Three more safeguards narrow it further: account limits that apply to every connection, a limit to certain broker accounts or to the bots a connection made, and your approval before anything starts, changes or stops live trading.
Account limits
The Account limits card on Connected Apps, marked Apply to every app and API client, lists every permission your plan covers, grouped under Bots and Backtick. Switch a permission on here to block it for every app and API client on your account, whatever their own settings say, then select Save account limits.
A blocked permission is refused on the next request, is shown greyed out on the consent page, and cannot be switched back on for any single connection until you lift the limit. Lifting a limit on Edit live bots, Enable bots or Resume all trading asks you for a fresh passkey or authenticator code.
Account limits are the ceiling. A request succeeds only when the permission is allowed for the connection, not blocked by an account limit, offered to that kind of connection, and covered by your plan at that moment. Every request is checked against all four.
Limiting to broker accounts or to its own bots
You can set both of these on the consent page when an assistant connects, or later on its card on Connected Apps.
- Only these accounts limits a connection to the broker accounts you switch on. It cannot read or change bots in other accounts, cannot create bots in them, and does not receive their trades.
- Only bots this app creates hides every bot the connection did not make, so a reviewing assistant sees only its own work. Bots you made on the website, and bots made by other connections, are hidden from it.
The two can be combined. When a connection is replaced through the consent page, the replacement keeps access to the bots the old one created. Asking to pause trading is account-wide and allowed whatever these two limits say, because it only ever makes your account do less.
What the assistant is told when a limit stops it
An assistant is only shown the tools its connection may use, so a permission you switched off or blocked simply is not there, and the assistant tells you it cannot do that. A bot on an account the connection may not use, or one it did not create when it is limited to its own bots, answers as if it did not exist. A connection limited to its own bots is refused account totals that would include other bots, and cannot change a Multi-Entry bot that holds entries made elsewhere. Connections limited to accounts or to their own bots lists what this means for each building tool.
Your approval before trading starts or changes
Four permissions start, change or stop live trading. A connected assistant and your own code, through an API client, can both hold them:
| Permission | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Edit live bots | Change a bot that is live: on, in a trade, with an opening order, a profit target or resting stop order from the last 24 hours, or a launch still pending, or turned off in the last ten minutes. |
| Enable bots | Turn a bot on. A Multi-Entry bot is never turned on by an assistant or through the API: you turn it on yourself. |
| Resume all trading | Turn the account's trading switch back on after a pause. |
| Pause all trading | Pause the account's trading switch. |
A connected assistant only asks: every request waits for your approval, and no switch turns that off. An API client keeps its own Ask me to approve each request switch under Edit live bots, Enable bots and Resume all trading, which starts on. A pause through the API needs no approval. Edit live bots, Enable bots and Resume all trading start off for both; Pause all trading starts on.
A waiting request appears under Actions awaiting approval on Connected Apps, grouped by the app or client that sent it and by when it was made. Each row shows which bot or account it is about, what kind of request it is and which settings change. Show all opens the full review of every request in a group, and one check approves every request you tick: your passkey or authenticator code, or your password if you have neither. You can also decide in the tradeSteward app where app approval is available, one request at a time.
Giving an API client Edit live bots or Enable bots, switching off the approval of either, or widening the limits of a client that holds one asks for a fresh passkey or authenticator code first. For a connected assistant the check covers all three, asked when you connect it or switch one on later, and your account password stands in when you have no passkey and no authenticator code. Whenever the password is used, tradeSteward urges you to add a passkey or two-factor authentication, so that approvals need more than a password. Approving Requests That Start Trading covers the whole flow.