Brandon LiandClaude Opus 5
37adbf67fc
focus.py now verifies on Windows rather than assuming activation worked. Windows declines to raise a window for a process that doesn't own the foreground — it flashes the taskbar and the call returns as if it succeeded — so the runner reads the foreground window's process back and reports a failure instead of clicking into a background window. Same gap that was fixed on macOS earlier. The runner also declares itself DPI-aware at startup. Without it Windows reports a virtualised screen size and rescales the coordinates it accepts, while the browser keeps reporting CSS pixels; on a display at 125% or 150% the two disagree and clicks drift further off the further they are from the top-left. Browser windows are matched on the owning process rather than the window title, so an editor with chrome.js open is no longer mistaken for the browser. Linux now says window management is unsupported there, rather than reporting no browser found — pygetwindow has no X11 backend, and "no browser window" reads like Chrome is shut. The main README gained a section on the AutoBuyer: what the three pieces are, how to load the extension, and that neither the extension nor the runner reloads itself when the source changes. That last point has been the cause of most of the confusing failures so far, so it is called out in Updating too. 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 (PM2)
Install PM2 globally:
npm install -g pm2
npm install -g pm2-windows-startup
Start the app and save the process list:
cd C:\path\to\autofirmer
pm2 start "npm start" --name autofirmer
pm2 save
pm2-startup install
To restart after pulling updates:
cd C:\path\to\autofirmer
git pull
npm install
npm run build
pm2 restart autofirmer
If the update touched the AutoBuyer, two things do not reload themselves:
- The extension — click reload on its card in
chrome://extensions. - The runner — stop it with Ctrl-C and start it again.
The dashboard reports the version it sees from each, and warns when either is behind. Most AutoBuyer bugs that look mysterious are one of these two still running the previous code.
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
cd C:\path\to\autofirmer
git pull
npm install # only needed if dependencies changed
npm run build
pm2 restart autofirmer
If the update touched the AutoBuyer, two things do not reload themselves:
- The extension — click reload on its card in
chrome://extensions. - The runner — stop it with Ctrl-C and start it again.
The dashboard reports the version it sees from each, and warns when either is behind. Most AutoBuyer bugs that look mysterious are one of these two still running the previous code.