Set Up Your First Bot

This quick start takes you from a brand new visitor to a bot placing real trades, in six steps. Nothing here assumes prior experience with tradeSteward, and every step links to a deeper article when you want the full detail.

Step 1: Create your account

Go to the registration page and fill in your first and last name, email address, phone number, and a password. Press Submit, review the Terms of Service, and choose I Agree. tradeSteward emails you a one-time verification code; enter it on the verification page, then log in with your email and password.

That is the whole account: no broker credentials, no funding, no paperwork. Create Your Account and Log In covers the details, including passkey login and two-factor authentication, both of which you can add later from Account Settings.

Step 2: Pick a plan

Plans come in two lines. Tracker plans capture and report every trade in your linked accounts but do not autotrade. Trader plans add autotrading and are sized by how many bots you can enable at once, so you only pay for the fleet size you actually run.

Compare the options on the Pricing page. To subscribe, open Account Settings from the account menu (the user icon in the top bar) and use Subscribe to Bots Now under Manage Bots Plan. You can pay monthly or annually, eligible new subscribers get their first week free on qualifying plans, and you can change plans later without losing anything. Choose Your Plan has the full breakdown.

Step 3: Link your broker

Bots trade inside your own brokerage account; your money never moves to tradeSteward. To connect the account, open the account menu (the user icon in the top bar), choose Manage Linked Brokers, and click Add/Update Brokerage Link. Pick your broker's logo: Charles Schwab, tastytrade, Tradier, or TradeStation. A popup takes you to your broker's own login page, where you authorize the connection; tradeSteward never sees your broker password.

Back on the Manage Linked Brokers page, flip the Enabled switch for each account you want bots to trade in, and confirm the Link Status looks healthy. Link a Brokerage Account walks the flow in full, and the per-broker guides cover the quirks that matter, like Schwab's required weekly reauthorization and TradeStation's dedicated username.

Step 4: Create your bot

Open the Bots menu and choose Create Bot. The form asks for everything the bot needs to trade without you, top to bottom:

• Bot Identification: give it a Bot Name you will recognize, pick the Trading Account it should trade in, and assign a Strategy so its results are grouped in your reporting. The Bot Status stays Disabled while you build.
• Trading Strategy: choose the Underlying Symbol and a Trade Template: Single Leg, Vertical Spread, Condor, or Custom.
• Position Legs: for each leg, set Put or Call, Long or Short, the Days to Expiration, and how the strike is picked. Delta targeting is the most common starting point: the bot finds the strike closest to the delta you name at entry time.
• Trade Entry: set the Position Sizing (a fixed Quantity of one contract is a sensible first setting), the Entry Time Window, and the Days of Week to Enter.
• Trade Exit and Trade Stop: give the bot a Profit Target Type and a Stop Loss Type so both the win and the loss are handled automatically.

Press Create Bot to save. Create a Bot explains the form section by section, and the Bot Settings Reference documents every field on it.

Step 5: Enable the bot and autotrading

Two switches control live trading, and both must be on:

• The bot's own Enabled toggle, on the View Bots page.
• Your account's master autotrading switch, at the top of the Bots menu. The menu header always shows where you stand: Bots Enabled, Bots Paused, or Bots Halted.

With both on, the bot arms itself for its next entry window. Pausing autotrading later stops all bots from opening new trades without touching the ones already open.

Step 6: Watch it work

Nothing happens until the bot's entry window opens on a day it is allowed to trade, so do not worry if the account sits quiet at first. The Bot Day Planner in the Bots menu shows exactly which bots are scheduled to enter today. When the window opens, the bot evaluates its rules, and either enters or logs why it did not; skipped entries show up with their reason in the activity feed.

The Trading Dashboard is your live view: today's profit and loss chart, every open bot position with live pricing, and the Recent Bot Activity feed. From the positions card you can close a trade early, adjust its stop or profit target, or add contracts, all without changing the bot's saved settings.

Where to go next

• Want more confidence before going live? Recreate the same idea in Backtick, test it against history, and convert the winner into a live bot.
• Deepen the bot itself: strike targeting, entry timing, stop losses, and profit targets.
• Stuck at any step? Get Help lists the fastest routes to a human, including the tradeSteward Discord.