Canary

Canary - IBKR MCP server for TWS and IB Gateway

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Documentation · [MCP tools](docs/docs/reference/mcp-tools.md) · [MCP resources](docs/docs/reference/mcp-resources.md) · [Configuration](docs/docs/reference/config.md) · [Sensors](docs/docs/understand/sensors.md) · [Rulebook](internal-docs/design/trading-rulebook.md) · [Trading policy](docs/docs/understand/policy.md) · [Storage](docs/docs/internals/storage.md) · [Architecture](docs/docs/internals/architecture.md) · [Platform settings](internal-docs/design/platform-settings.md) · [Working with agents](docs/docs/operate/agents.md) · [Mobile app](web/app/README.md)

A local command line, MCP server, and risk desk for Interactive Brokers.

canary turns your local IB Gateway or TWS session into structured account and market context for the terminal, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Continue, Zed, and other MCP hosts. It is the local canary mcp TWS bridge for portfolio review, exposure mapping, options diagnostics, market-regime checks, scanner-driven research, watchlist monitoring, and position-sizing math.

For MCP users, canary mcp exposes the same typed reads as the command line. The bundled MCP surface cannot place, modify, cancel, or transmit broker orders; it can analyze the book, size plans, and draft preview-only stock/ETF limit orders.

Use it from a shell:

canary status
canary positions --by underlying
canary regime
canary stress
canary market-events --symbol GME --json
canary watch IBM --add
canary watch
canary calendar --market us --date 2026-05-25
canary quote SPY --watch
canary size --symbol AAPL --entry 207.50 --stop 202.50 --risk-pct 1
canary settings show

Or connect it to Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Continue, Zed, or any MCP host and ask:

> "What's in my IBKR account?" > > "Review my portfolio and rank the risks I should look at today." > > "Show my AAPL exposure, including option deltas." > > "How does the market regime look today?" > > "Should I hold, watch, de-lever, or liquidate risk?" > > "Is Xetra open on Whit Monday?" > > "If I buy 100 MSFT at 418 with a stop at 408, what's my EUR risk?"

Your account data stays on the machine running IB Gateway or TWS unless you choose to send it to an MCP host. The project ships as one Go binary with a CLI, a local MCP server, and a Go library. No Python runtime, Java runtime, or hosted service is required.

Contents — [Install](#install) · [What you get](#what-you-get) · [Pick your path](#pick-your-path) · [How it works](#how-it-works) · [Configure](#configure) · [Safety](#safety) · [Other install paths](#other-install-paths) · [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting)

Install

Prerequisites. A running IB Gateway 10.37+ or TWS (paper or live) on the same machine. Auto-discovered on the four standard ports. An IBKR Pro account (IBKR Lite cannot use the TWS API).

Claude Desktop

Download the latest MCP Bundle:

Open the .mcpb file with Claude Desktop, drag it into Claude Desktop, or use Settings -> Extensions -> Advanced settings -> Install Extension. Quit Claude completely and relaunch it after installation.

The MCPB bundles the canary binary for macOS and Linux, runs it locally through stdio, and does not require a separate shell install. Windows Claude Desktop is not supported because canary has no native Windows daemon; WSL works through the shell install path below.

Shell, Cursor, Continue, Zed, and generic MCP hosts

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/osauer/canary/main/install.sh | sh
canary setup claude-desktop

The installer downloads the release for your OS and architecture, verifies the checksum, installs canary in ~/.local/bin, and adds that directory to your shell rc when needed. On macOS, it also clears Gatekeeper quarantine.

canary setup claude-desktop writes the legacy MCP server entry to Claude Desktop. Prefer the MCPB path above for Claude Desktop unless you specifically want one shared shell-managed binary. Skip the setup command if you only want the shell tool.

For v1.0.0+ releases, the installer, canary update, and the MCPB release asset are covered by the signed SHA256SUMS file. The MCP Registry metadata also carries the MCPB file SHA-256. [Other install paths.](#other-install-paths)

What you get

• Account and positions. Net liquidation, buying power, cash, margin, daily P&L, positions, option Greeks, per-underlying grouping, and portfolio-level delta/theta/gamma/vega rollups. Multi-currency accounts include FX exposure.
• Quotes and history. Snapshot quotes, coalesced stock/ETF streaming, daily OHLCV bars, previous close, day change, and data freshness (live, frozen, delayed, delayed-frozen).
• Official market calendars. US cash equities, US listed options regular sessions, and German Xetra cash equities with holidays, early closes, next open/close, and quote session_context when calendar state explains stale or missing data.
• Local watchlist. Add/remove/clear symbols offline, list them as JSON, show an enriched quote monitor with price, currency, changes, ranges, volume, timestamps, and held-stock context, or poll the saved list with canary watch --watch.
• Options. Expiry lists with ATM IV and implied move, strike grids with call/put quotes, deltas, and open interest. Option snapshots are supported; option streaming is not exposed.
• Scanners. Built-in market scans for movers, losers, unusual volume, gaps, high IV rank, and option volume. Agents can also compose ad-hoc scans without writing config.
• Position sizing. Fixed-fractional sizing against live NLV, with optional target, R-multiple, and breakeven win rate. Pure math; never an order ticket.
• Market breadth. S&P 500 participation from constituent daily bars: percent above 50-DMA, percent above 200-DMA, and fresh 52-week highs/lows. A fresh cache is instant; first-ever cold start can take about an hour because of IBKR pacing.
• Dealer gamma. Production-ready SPX/SPXW-canonical zero-gamma and concentration view, with SPY used as corroborating context when its option surface is usable. A fresh, rankable SPX result is the stable headline signal; SPY-only is a labeled proxy. Treat the signed level as a regime hint, not a precise trading level.
• Risk regime. One call returns the eight-row dashboard: VIX term structure, VVIX, HYG/SPY divergence, HY/IG OAS, funding spread, USD/JPY weekly move, SPX-canonical dealer gamma, and S&P 500 breadth. Heavy rows report computing instead of pretending stale data is fresh.
• Portfolio stress. canary stress and MCP canary_stress produce a stateless market regime × portfolio shape monitor with action, market_confirmation, portfolio_fit, input_health, planner readiness, stable fingerprints, and supporting signals[]. It also emits bounded portfolio.held_stress[] rows for material held underlyings when existing positions data shows held-name daily P&L shock, near-expiry held-option delta concentration, or held-name liquidity degradation. Account-only risk stays evidence, not a DEFEND trigger; DEFEND requires confirmed market pressure, vulnerable portfolio fit, and clean enough inputs. Use canary stress --details for the full evidence rows.
• Market-event flags. canary market-events and MCP canary_market_events annotate held or requested stock/ETF symbols with borrow inventory, extreme borrow fee, Nasdaq Reg SHO threshold-list, LULD pause, and regulatory/news halt context. Flags are context and proposal gates: active halt/LULD can block protection proposals, borrow stress can strengthen short buy-to-cover context, and unknown sources remain unknown rather than false. Borrow-fee output also discloses global versus exact-held-short coverage; the narrow TWS FEE_RATE fallback remains scale-unverified and cannot create or clear the 50% flag.
• Protection proposals and order views. The daemon maintains trailing-stop, theta-hygiene, and risk-reduction proposals with per-row blockers; canary proposals and MCP canary_proposals read them. Order state is a local journal read (canary orders open, canary orders history, canary order status) that reconciles itself against the broker's open-order list after each reconnect and every 30 minutes, closing rows the broker no longer reports as closed_reconciled. A protective stop that no longer matches its position is flagged critical with the exact reduce-to-position quantity. These are reads; acting on any of it stays behind the separate gated order path.
• Platform settings. canary settings show and MCP canary_settings report runtime preferences, trading/build capability, account mode, and compact observed market-data quality with access, source, and read-only reasons. features.purge_restore.enabled controls the workflow/read surface while purge status stays readable; it never authorizes broker submission, which is currently unavailable and must be handled manually in TWS.

Every data command supports --json. canary restart --json is also useful for scripts: it reports whether a daemon was already running, old/new PIDs, whether --force was used, the post-start status.health snapshot, and any app process it refreshed. Lifecycle commands such as setup, update, restart, mcp, and daemon are for local operation and transport setup.

For schemas and edge cases, see the [agent skill schema notes](skills/canary/schemas.md), [MCP tools reference](docs/docs/reference/mcp-tools.md), [MCP resources reference](docs/docs/reference/mcp-resources.md), [configuration reference](docs/docs/reference/config.md), and [concept docs](docs/docs/understand/concepts.md).

For ready-to-run prompts, see [examples/canaryportfolioanalysisprompt.md](examples/canaryportfolioanalysisprompt.md) for portfolio review and [examples/canaryportfoliostressprompt.md](examples/canaryportfoliostressprompt.md) for scheduled stress checks.

Pick your path

Claude Desktop, Cursor, Continue, Zed

canary mcp starts a local stdio MCP server. MCP hosts can call the same account, watchlist, quote, calendar, position, scanner, sizing, regime, stress, and preview-only order-draft tools that the CLI exposes as JSON. The order preview surface can mint a local non-submitting preview token, but it cannot place, modify, cancel, or transmit broker orders. Watchlist access through MCP can return either the saved symbols or enriched quote rows; local lifecycle verbs such as setup, update, restart, mcp, daemon, and version stay outside the MCP tool set.

The server also exposes quotes for stocks and ETFs as an MCP resource:

• canary://quote/{symbol}

resources/read returns one snapshot for that URI; resources/subscribe delivers coalesced ticks via notifications/resources/updated until you resources/unsubscribe or close the stdio. The resource shape is documented in [docs/docs/reference/mcp-resources.md](docs/docs/reference/mcp-resources.md).

For Claude Desktop, the recommended install path is the .mcpb asset from the latest release. For other clients, paste this into the client's MCP config (path varies):

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

The command must be the absolute path. ~ is not expanded by exec and $PATH is not consulted. which canary gives you the right value. After upgrading the binary, fully quit and relaunch the client — it caches the spawned server process. MCPB installs carry their own embedded binary; reinstall the new .mcpb release to update that path.

claude.ai (web) accepts only remote MCP servers and cannot reach a local IB Gateway. Use Desktop.

Logs (macOS, Claude Desktop): ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-canary.log.

Claude Code

Inside a standalone Claude Code session:

/plugin marketplace add osauer/canary
/plugin install canary@canary

Or — for Claude for Mac's embedded Claude Code pane, which doesn't expose /plugin slash commands — from a regular terminal:

claude plugin marketplace add osauer/canary
claude plugin install canary@canary

The plugin carries a skill, Claude Code MCP server config for canary mcp, a PreToolUse hook that permits read/preview order commands, blocks shell command chaining around broker-adjacent writes, and refuses broker-write verbs unless the daemon reports a paper or live write-ready trading state (failing closed for broker-adjacent canary commands if jq is missing from PATH), plus a SessionStart hint when the binary isn't installed. The skill's allowed-tools pre-allows read and preview-only patterns once the skill activates. For a global allowlist that fires before the skill activates, merge settings/canary.settings.json into ~/.claude/settings.json by hand — it is permissions-only: read/preview patterns are allowed, and destructive daemon maintenance carries explicit deny rules while broker writes remain decided by the hook and daemon gates.

The plugin doesn't ship the binary. It carries the skill, hooks, MCP launcher config, and manifest — you still need the canary binary from [Install](#install). The MCP launcher looks at CANARY_BIN, the plugin's local development bin/canary, PATH, ~/.local/bin/canary, Homebrew, and /usr/local/bin/canary. The binary and plugin have independent release cadences and independent update paths:

# Binary release (new MCP tool descriptions are baked into the binary):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/osauer/canary/main/install.sh | sh

# Plugin release (new skill commands, settings, hooks):
claude plugin update canary@canary

Restart the host (Claude for Mac, standalone Claude Code session, Cursor, …) after either update so it respawns the MCP server subprocess with the new descriptions and reloads the skill at the next session start.

The shell

$ canary account --json | jq '.net_liquidation, .base_currency'
$ canary watch IBM --add
$ canary watch --list --json
$ canary watch --json | jq '.rows[] | {sym: .symbol, price: .price, chg: .change_pct, as_of: .price_as_of}'
$ canary quote AAPL,MSFT --json | jq '.[] | {sym: .symbol, price: .price, chg: .change_pct}'
$ canary quote MBG --market de --json | jq '{sym: .symbol, ccy: .contract.currency, last: .last}'
$ canary calendar --market us-options --date 2026-11-27 --json | jq '.session'
$ canary positions --by underlying --json | jq '.portfolio.effective_delta'
$ canary stress --json | jq '{action, market_confirmation, portfolio_fit, held_stress: .portfolio.held_stress}'
$ canary market-events --symbol GME --json | jq '{flags, source_health, fingerprint}'
$ canary settings show --json | jq '.features.purge_restore.enabled'
$ canary chain NVDA --json | jq '.expiries[] | select(.iv > 0.6)'
$ canary size --symbol AAPL --entry 207.50 --stop 202.50 --risk-pct 1

canary --help lists subcommands; canary --help lists flags. canary status first if anything looks off.

Mobile app

canary app serves a paired PWA for iPhone-sized checks when you are away from the desk: daemon status, account and positions, market context, stress state, alerts, and settings. The app has Monitor, Alerts, and Settings tabs; Settings can toggle the purge/restore workflow preference, but broker submission remains unavailable and requires manual TWS action. Start it on the Mac running TWS or IB Gateway, then run canary app pair and scan the QR code.

For access away from the LAN without router setup, run canary app --remote to use the Cloudflare Worker relay at remote.osauer.dev, then run canary app pair as usual

…

Source & license

This open-source MCP server is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: osauer
• Source: osauer/canary
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://osauer.dev/canary/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.