The Visual Builder

The engine runs the graph you draw, node for node: there is no code behind it to write or read. This page covers everything you do on the canvas, from the first node to a strategy that is ready to run.

#Where to find it

Open a project and choose Build on its rail. The canvas fills the middle, the palette runs down its left edge, and the run settings sit on the right. Editing needs a desktop-sized screen: on a phone the canvas is view-only.

#Reading it

1. 1

   The palette

   Every node you can add, under a search box. At the top, your Favorites, Recent nodes, Variables, Patterns and Custom Clusters; then the categories: Data, Indicators, Price Action, External Data, Signals, Logic & Flow, Math & Operators, Modifiers and Order Management. Hover a node for what it does, and View Guide → opens its reference page. The chevron at the top folds the palette to a strip of icons.

2. 2

   The canvas

   Your strategy as a graph. Drag the empty canvas to move around, and scroll to zoom. The map in the bottom right shows the whole graph and where you are in it.

3. 3

   The toolbar

   Top right: Clean Up / Auto-Layout Graph tidies the graph left to right, Validate Strategy checks it, then undo and redo, the group button, and Strategy Manager, whose dot turns red while you have unsaved changes.

4. 4

   The Regime Engine switch

   Top left. It turns regime mode on, which gives the strategy a separate graph for each market regime.

5. 5

   The view controls

   Bottom left: Zoom In, Zoom Out, Fit View, and full screen, which hides the run settings to give the canvas the whole width.

6. 6

   Drawing tools

   At the foot of the palette: frames, text, notes and dividers in a few colors, for labeling parts of the graph. They change nothing about how it runs.

#How a strategy reads

Almost every strategy has the same four layers, left to right:

1. Values: price, an indicator, a level, the time. Numbers that change bar by bar.
2. Conditions: a Comparison, a Crossover, a Time Window. Each turns values into true or false.
3. Logic: AND, OR and NOT combine conditions into one signal.
4. Orders: the Entry opens a trade when its signal is true; the Trade node and the Bracket Order manage it until it closes.

The Node Reference has a page for every node.

#Add a node

• Drag it from the palette onto the canvas. It lands where you drop it. An Entry brings a Trade node with it, already wired, since every trade needs one.
• From a library. Indicators, Price Action, External Data and Signals open a library you can search; its add button puts the node in the middle of your view.
• Keep the ones you use. The star on a node adds it to Favorites. Your last ten show under Recent.

#Wire nodes together

A node's inputs are on its left and its outputs on its right. Drag from an output to an input to connect them. While you drag, the nodes that can take the wire stay lit and the rest dim, so a number never lands where a condition belongs. Drop a wire on an input that can't take it, and a message says what the input expects.

Wiring into an input that already has a wire replaces the old one. To remove a wire, click it and press Delete. A shortcut: press and drag with the right mouse button on a node to start a wire from its first free output.

A Bracket Order is not wired. Press its Attach to a trade, then click the Trade node it should exit. The button then names that trade, as in ✓ Exits Trade 1. With more than one Trade node on the canvas, the builder numbers them Trade 1, Trade 2 and so on.

#Edit a node

Settings live on the node itself: type a value or pick from a menu. A few nodes open an editor for the rest: an indicator's paintbrush, Plotting & Colors, sets how it draws on the chart; a price-action node has Configure; a State Machine has Edit machine.

#Select, copy and group

• Select by clicking. Hold Ctrl to add to the selection, or drag a box with the right mouse button. Shift and drag also draws a box.
• Copy and paste with Ctrl C and Ctrl V, or right-click for Copy, Paste and Delete. A paste lands just below and to the right, selected.
• Delete with Delete or Backspace. Deleting an Entry deletes its scale-ins; deleting a Trade node deletes the targets and stops attached to it.
• Undo and redo with the toolbar buttons, Ctrl Z and Ctrl Y.

#Read another market or bar size

A node that reads prices, such as an indicator or Current Price, has a series menu. It reads the strategy's primary series until you pick another. To read a second market (NQ beside ES) or a second bar size (an hourly trend over five-minute entries), add that series under Data Series in the run settings, then choose it in the node's series menu. Trades always go to the primary series' market, whatever the nodes read.

#Clusters

Select two or more nodes and press the group button to fold them into a cluster: one card that you can rename (double-click its name), expand and collapse. Save a cluster to reuse it in any strategy: it appears under Custom Clusters in the palette, ready to drag in. To take a cluster apart, select it and press the group button again.

#Check it before you run

Validate Strategy checks the graph. The canvas edge flashes green when it passes, red when it doesn't, and Validation Results lists the Errors and Warnings. Each has View, which takes you to the node, and the nodes at fault glow red. Run Backtest runs the same check first, so a strategy with an error never spends credits.

#Starting from an empty canvas

A new project's empty canvas offers three ways in: Drag a node in from the palette, Open the build wizard to answer a few questions and have the copilot build it with you, or Start from a template to load a ready-made strategy and change it from there.

#When it looks wrong

• "Execution logic must contain at least one 'Entry' or 'Scale-In' node." Add an Entry from Order Management.
• "Node '…' is not connected to the strategy." Wire it in, or delete it. An indicator left unwired is only a warning: it still draws on the chart.
• A Trade node is "missing a valid exit strategy". Give it a way out: an exit condition, both a target and a stop, or a Bracket Order attached to it.
• A wire won't connect. The input takes a different kind of value, a number where you have a condition or the reverse. The message on screen names both.
• Searching for an indicator finds nothing. The palette's search covers its own nodes; indicators have their own search inside the Indicators library.
• There is no palette. The canvas is read-only on a phone, and on the Optimize stage, which shows the strategy without changing it.