How-to · set & forget

How to set price & indicator alerts with an AI agent

TradingView alerts buzz with no context; broker pushes can't reason. TradeLoop's approach: describe the setup you're waiting for in plain language, and a background loop on your own machine watches the conditions — price levels, RSI and MACD triggers, earnings proximity, filings — then hands your AI agent a fully-contextualized packet the moment one trips. No rule DSL, no dashboard.

Step 1 — Install and configure

curl -fsSL https://tradeloop.top/install.sh | sh
tradeloop login
tradeloop setup

Three commands: install, create your free account, and wire the MCP config into every AI client on your machine (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex). The Market Monitor skill is included at the free tier — no API keys needed to start.

Step 2 — Describe the conditions, don't configure them

Open your agent and say what you'd tell a junior trader watching the desk for you:

Watch AAPL, MSFT, and NVDA.
Alert me if any 14-day RSI drops under 30,
if MACD crosses its signal line,
or if price crosses the 200-day moving average.
Also flag anything on the list reporting earnings within 3 days.

The agent translates that into registered rules via the monitor skill's watch_add tool. On a fixed interval the daemon's background watcher pulls fresh bars for each symbol, recomputes the indicators, and evaluates every condition.

Step 3 — Verify what's armed

List my active monitoring rules.

The agent calls watch_list and reads back every symbol and condition. Rules persist locally — close the laptop lid, reopen tomorrow, and everything is still armed. Remove one the same way: “stop watching MSFT.”

What an alert actually looks like

A normal stock alert says “AAPL RSI < 30” and leaves you to assemble the context. TradeLoop's loop delivers a packet:

{
  "symbol": "AAPL",
  "trigger": "RSI(14) crossed below 30 (now 28.4)",
  "price": 214.10,
  "macd": { "line": -1.2, "signal": -0.9 },
  "ma200": 221.5,
  "next_earnings": "2026-08-01",
  "recent_filings": ["8-K 2026-06-22"]
}

Because the agent receives momentum, trend reference, earnings proximity, and filings in one shot, your first question — “dip worth buying or falling knife?” — gets a reasoned answer immediately, and it's your call from there.

Limits worth knowing

• Not for HFT. The loop is built for minute-to-hourly setups, not tick-level reaction.
• Focused watchlists. 10–30 names on a reasonable interval is the sweet spot; every S&P name every minute will hit provider rate limits.
• Failure is loud, not silent. If a feed fails persistently (revoked key, exhausted quota), the loop tells the agent — “monitoring for AAPL paused: provider returned 401” — instead of quietly dropping the symbol.

Troubleshooting

Alerts never fire.

Confirm the daemon is running with tradeloop doctor, then ask the agent to list active rules — the most common cause is that a condition was discussed but never actually registered.

A condition fired but seems wrong.

Ask the agent to show the rule and the data behind the trigger (“show me the RSI series that tripped this”). Indicator conditions evaluate on the loop's refresh interval, so a value can cross and recross between checks.

Going further

Pair alerts with live quotes and indicators in Claude and cited research — when an alert fires, the same agent can pull the FinTwit read and file the outcome to your journal in one conversation.

Related skills: Market Monitor · Technical Indicators · Levels & Setups. Deep dive: How TradeLoop's Market-Monitoring Loop Works.