Brandon LiandClaude Opus 5
4288d8c298
Instances were started by hand and updated by hand, so they drifted behind master silently. Now: PM2 supervises the dashboard and the clicker, a logon task brings them up, and a 5-minute task pulls, rebuilds and restarts when master moves. Restarting on every push is only safe because the scheduler now survives it. It was pure in-memory state (_global.__autoTrader), so any restart silently stopped automated trading with the dashboard simply showing it as off. It now mirrors running/action/symbol/stopAfterAll to the settings table, and resumeSchedulerIfPersisted() picks it back up from the getClients() bootstrap. No sync-wait was needed there: tick() already skips while a client reports !syncComplete and while any account holds a position. A failed build is never deployed — the build runs before anything restarts, so a broken push leaves the previous build serving. start-all and update-check both warm the app with a request afterwards. That is load-bearing: getClients() is lazily bootstrapped, so until something makes an HTTP request the Tradovate clients, the reporter and the resumed schedule never start. That was already true of manual restarts. Logic lives in Node so a macOS or Linux port only needs an equivalent of install-autostart.ps1. Python deps are hash-guarded, so the common path is one hash and one import with no network, and failure is non-fatal since only the clicker needs them. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
AutoFirmer
Automated futures trading dashboard for prop firm accounts via Tradovate.
VPS Setup (Windows Server 2019 / 2022)
All commands are run in PowerShell (run as Administrator).
1. Install Git
Download and install from https://git-scm.com/download/win, or via winget:
winget install --id Git.Git -e --source winget
Restart PowerShell after installing so git is on the PATH.
2. Install Node.js 22+
winget install --id OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS -e --source winget
Restart PowerShell, then verify:
node --version # should be v22.x or higher
npm --version
3. Install Windows Build Tools (required for better-sqlite3)
better-sqlite3 compiles a native C++ module and needs the Visual Studio build tools:
npm install -g windows-build-tools
If that fails on newer Node, install manually:
- Download Build Tools for Visual Studio from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/#build-tools-for-visual-studio-2022
- During install, select "Desktop development with C++"
4. Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/Senofy/autofirmer.git
cd autofirmer
5. Install dependencies
npm install
6. Build
npm run build
7. Run
Development (with hot reload):
npm run dev
Production:
npm start
The app runs on port 3000. Access it at http://<your-vps-ip>:3000.
First-time setup
On first run, the SQLite database (autotrader.sqlite) is created automatically in the project root. No migrations need to be run manually.
Open the app in your browser and add your firms through the UI:
- Click + Add Firm on the main page
- Enter the firm name, Tradovate username, and password
- Go to the firm's Settings page to configure account types (prefix, profit target, consistency %, etc.)
- Return to the main page — accounts will populate once the firm connects to Tradovate
AutoBuyer (browser automation)
The AutoBuyer page drives a real browser to buy and reset prop-firm accounts. It is three pieces, and all three must be running:
| Piece | What it does |
|---|---|
| the dashboard | Defines automations, queues runs, shows progress |
extension/ |
A Chromium extension that reads the broker page and measures elements |
clicker/runner.py |
A desktop process that moves the real mouse and keyboard |
Automations are declared in lib/automations.ts — one entry per firm, with the
steps inside. Adding a button means editing that file; the page and the runner
pick it up from the server.
1. Load the extension
chrome://extensions → enable Developer mode → Load unpacked →
select the extension folder.
Chrome does not reload an unpacked extension when its files change. After pulling updates, click the reload icon on its card — the dashboard shows the version it sees, and a mismatch means the reload did not take.
Adding a new firm also means adding its host to host_permissions in
extension/manifest.json and reloading. Without it the extension cannot read
that site, and every step fails to locate.
2. Install the clicker
cd clicker
pip install -r requirements.txt
See clicker/README.md for the per-platform notes — display scaling and
foreground lock both matter on Windows — and for the verification sequence to
run before letting it click anything on a new machine.
3. Start the runner
python clicker\runner.py
Leave it running. It reports in every two seconds, and the dashboard greys out the automation buttons when it is not there. A running Python process does not reload when the source changes, so restart it after pulling updates; the dashboard warns when its version is behind.
Running it
Turn Page capture on from the AutoBuyer page, then press an automation's button. Progress appears per step, and Stop halts a run between steps.
The browser must be visible and frontmost while a run is in flight — the clicks are real OS-level input, so the machine cannot be used for anything else, and a dialog stealing focus fails the step. That makes an RDP session a poor host: disconnecting can suspend the desktop and break clicks in ways that are hard to diagnose.
Keeping it running
setup-windows.bat offers to set this up for you at step 6. To enable it later,
or after declining:
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\install-autostart.ps1
That registers PM2 for both processes and two scheduled tasks — one to start
everything at logon, one to check master for updates every 5 minutes. It needs
no elevation and is safe to re-run; it replaces the tasks rather than stacking
them up.
pm2 list # what is running
pm2 logs autofirmer # dashboard output
pm2 logs clicker # runner output
Why scheduled tasks and not a Windows service. The clicker sends real mouse and keyboard input and has to own a desktop. A service runs in session 0, which has none, so the clicks would go nowhere. Both tasks therefore run as you with "run only when user is logged on" — which also means an unattended reboot leaves the instance down until somebody logs in.
To start everything by hand without waiting for a logon:
node scripts\start-all.mjs
start-autofirmer.bat still runs the dashboard in a visible window without PM2,
which is the easier thing to watch when a build is misbehaving.
Firewall
To restrict port 3000 to a specific trusted IP only:
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "AutoFirmer" -Direction Inbound -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 3000 -RemoteAddress <your-ip> -Action Allow
Or open it to all inbound (less secure):
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "AutoFirmer" -Direction Inbound -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 3000 -Action Allow
Updating
Once auto-start is installed, nothing here is manual. Every 5 minutes the update
task fetches master, and when it has moved it pulls, reinstalls dependencies if
package-lock.json or clicker/requirements.txt changed, rebuilds, restarts
AutoFirmer, and restarts the clicker if anything under clicker/ changed.
A failed build is never deployed. The build runs before anything restarts, so a broken push leaves the previous build serving and logs the failure instead.
Everything it does is appended to scripts/update.log. To see what it would do
without touching anything:
node scripts\update-check.mjs --dry-run
To apply an update immediately rather than waiting for the next check:
node scripts\update-check.mjs
The two things that still do not reload themselves
- The extension — click reload on its card in
chrome://extensions. - The scheduler is fine now. It persists to the settings table and resumes after a restart, so an update no longer silently stops automated trading.
The dashboard reports the version it sees from the extension and the runner, and warns when either is behind. Most AutoBuyer bugs that look mysterious are the extension still running the previous code.