What this is

☁️ Cloud broker — Alpaca exposes a public REST API, so this runs directly in the Starchild container, no local gateway needed. US equities and ETFs.

Paper and live are fully separated: different key pairs, different hosts (paper-api.alpaca.markets vs api.alpaca.markets). A paper key physically cannot touch the live account. Live order placement additionally requires the --confirm-live flag.

Get your API keys

Sign up at alpaca.markets (US brokerage; paper trading is free and needs no funding).
Paper keys: log in → switch to Paper Trading (toggle top-left) → Home → "API Keys" panel → Generate New Keys. Copy the Key ID and Secret Key (secret shown once).
Live keys (optional, real money): switch to Live Trading → same API Keys panel → generate. These are a different pair from paper.
Market data: the free IEX feed works out of the box. SIP (full-market) needs a paid data subscription.

Configure (.env)

Request via secure input — never paste keys in chat. Variables: