Broker MCP Selector

Overview

The rest of the Alpha Skills suite is the brain — it screens, scores, detects regimes, and produces a trade plan. This skill is the hands: it answers the next question, "where do I actually place this order, and is it safe to let an agent do it?"

It selects a broker MCP server for execution based on what the user trades, where they are, and how much autonomy they're comfortable giving an agent — then walks them through connecting it with safe defaults.

The authoritative, continuously re-verified data behind this skill lives in awesome-broker-mcp — a directory where every entry was opened and read at the source (the broker's own docs or the server's own repo). A condensed snapshot ships in references/brokers.md; always prefer the live list for the final decision, because this space moves fast and a stale entry is how someone wires an agent to the wrong thing.

When to Use

Invoke this skill when the user wants to:

• "Actually place the trade" / "submit this order" / "execute this"
• "Connect my agent to my brokerage" / "wire up execution"
• "Which broker can Claude trade through?" / "does have an MCP server?"
• "Set up an auto-trader" / "automate my strategy" (pair with ghost-auto-trader)
• "Is it safe to let an AI place orders on my account?"
• Move from a plan produced by any screener/analysis skill to a live or paper order
• Choose between broker MCP servers, or check if one is read-only vs. trade-capable

The two questions that decide almost everything

Before recommending anything, establish these — they collapse the whole option space:

1. Who wrote the server, and can it actually place an order?

   • ✅ Trades — places a real order on its own tool call.
   • 📝 Draft only — builds the order; the human submits it in the broker's UI. The server physically cannot submit (e.g. Interactive Brokers).
   • 👁️ Read-only — cannot place an order. Often official and deliberate. Most people wiring up an LLM for analysis want exactly this.
   • "Has an MCP server" ≠ "can trade." Some official servers are docs-only or read-only; some community repos claim MCP but never register a trading tool. Verify the tool surface, not the marketing.

2. What's the safety posture if the agent does something careless? From safest to sharpest (see references/brokers.md for who sits where):

   • Cannot execute, by design (IBKR draft-approval) — no env var turns it on.
   • Draft-first, prompt-enforced (Trade It) — must draft, show, be told to execute.
   • Paper / sandbox by default (Alpaca, Kraken, Webull) — live is opt-in, server-side.
   • Live on a tool call (Robinhood, Tradier, most community servers) — the only guardrail is your client config.
   • Live, and no paper mode exists (Public.com) — every confirmation is real money.

Workflow

Step 1: Scope the need

Ask (or infer from prior suite output):

• Asset class — equities, options, futures, crypto, FX/CFD, event contracts.
• Region — US, India, Asia, EU, crypto (global).
• Autonomy — analysis only, human-in-the-loop draft approval, or full auto-execution.
• Environment — remote/hosted (paste a URL) vs. local (a process on their machine).

If the honest answer is "I just want analysis," recommend read-only and stop. Least privilege: analysis needs no trading scope, and it removes the entire "prompt injection reaches my account" blast radius.

Step 2: Match against the directory

Read references/brokers.md, then confirm against the live list (https://github.com/mphinance/awesome-broker-mcp) before finalizing. Narrow by asset class + region, then rank by the safety posture the user asked for.

Sensible defaults when the user is unsure:

• Safest thing that still trades → Interactive Brokers (draft-approval, server cannot submit).
• Experiment without risking money → Alpaca or Kraken (paper/sandbox by default).
• Analysis only → SnapTrade / Truthifi (read-only by design).
• Crypto → Kraken, OKX, Bybit, Gemini (all official, all trade).
• India → Zerodha (trades, self-hosted) or Upstox (read-only).

Step 3: Present the recommendation

Give the user a short, decision-shaped answer:

## Recommended: <Broker> MCP

- **Can it trade?** <✅ / 📝 / 👁️> — <one line>
- **Safety posture:** <posture> — <what happens on a careless prompt>
- **Type:** <Local (uvx/npx) / Remote / needs a gateway>
- **Official or community?** <who wrote it — and if community, "strangers' code holding
  your credentials; check the last commit">
- **Why this one:** <ties back to their asset class / region / autonomy answer>
- **Source:** <link to the awesome-broker-mcp page for this broker>

### Safer alternative
<If the pick is "live on a tool call," always name the draft-first or paper-default
option they could use instead.>

Step 4: Wire it up with safe defaults

• Turn paper/sandbox on and leave live off until the user has watched it behave. Name the exact switch (e.g. Alpaca ALPACA_PAPER_TRADE=true; Kraken paper scope on, trade scope off).
• Where the server supports it, leave the trading tools out entirely server-side (e.g. Alpaca ALPACA_TOOLSETS) if the user only needs data.
• Prefer draft-first execution when available. For full automation, hand off to ghost-auto-trader and keep an explicit approval gate.
• For portfolio reads feeding analysis, hand off to portfolio-manager.

Step 5: State the risks plainly

Before any live connection, surface these (don't bury them):

• Prompt injection reaches your account. If the agent reads a webpage, email, or Discord message, hostile text is one hop from an order once it also holds a trading tool.
• Separate the brain from the hands. Analysis and execution don't have to be — and arguably shouldn't be — the same connector.
• Paper first, for longer than feels necessary. Nothing here is battle-tested at the level your money assumes.

Reference Files

references/brokers.md

• When: matching a need to a broker, or checking trade-capability / safety posture.
• Contains: a condensed, attributed snapshot of the awesome-broker-mcp directory — official/community/aggregator servers, what each trades, local vs. remote, and safety posture. Always cross-check the live list before finalizing.

Relationship to the rest of the suite

Stage	Skill	Role
Decide what to trade	screeners, regime detectors, stanley-druckenmiller-investment	the brain
Decide where to execute	broker-mcp-selector (this skill)	the hands
Read the account	portfolio-manager	eyes on positions
Automate execution	ghost-auto-trader	the trigger finger (with a gate)

Limitations and Disclaimers

This skill helps you choose and connect tooling. It is not financial advice and not an endorsement of any broker or server. Community servers are third-party code that will hold your broker credentials — read them, check the last commit, and assume the maintainer may walk away. Verify every capability against the source before connecting to real money.