Terminal Access & MCP¶
Overview¶
Everything you do in the web terminal — check a price, read your positions, watch your drawdown, place a bracketed order — can also be done from your own command line, by an AI assistant you control.
E8 Markets runs an MCP server (Model Context Protocol). It is the same connection the in-terminal chat assistant uses, exposed so you can point your own tools at it: Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, or a script you wrote yourself.
Settings → API Keys (avatar menu → Settings) lets you create and revoke keys for this purpose, and shows each key's name and creation date next to a delete control.
Read this before automating anything: Safety & Limits. An API key created on the settings page can place and close real orders. That is the default, not an opt-in.
Q: What do I need to get started?
A: An E8 Markets account, an API key, and a client that speaks MCP. Minting the key takes about thirty seconds from Settings → API Keys → Create New API Key. Connecting Claude Code is one command:
# 1. Get a key at https://trade.e8markets.com/settings → API Keys
# 2. Connect Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http e8-terminal https://trade.e8markets.com/api/mcp
# 3. Ask it something
claude -p "Using the e8-terminal tools, what's my account equity and how much room is left before my daily loss limit?"
Claude Code will open your browser to approve access the first time. Full instructions for every client — including Cursor, Claude Desktop, and plain curl — are in Connecting Your Terminal.
Q: What can I actually reach?
A: Grouped by what they answer:
| You want to know | Tools | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Price, candles, chart data | e8_trade_asset_get, e8_trade_history, e8_trade_chart, e8_trade_asset_list |
any key |
| News | e8_news, e8_news_ticker, e8_news_categories |
any key |
| Accounts, positions, orders | e8_accounts_list, e8_account_info, e8_positions_list, e8_orders_list, e8_order_get |
read:trade |
| How close to a limit | e8_account_limits |
read:trade |
| Trading performance | e8_analytics_user, e8_analytics_account, e8_milestones_list, e8_milestone_progress |
read:trade |
| Dashboards | e8_dashboard_get, e8_dashboard_suggest |
any key |
| Place, cancel, close | e8_order_place, e8_order_cancel, e8_position_close, e8_positions_close_all |
trade:execute |
Full parameters and gotchas: Tool Reference.
Note for automation covering Stop and Stop-Limit orders specifically: confirm the exact parameter names
e8_order_placeexpects forstopPriceandlimitPriceagainst the live Tool Reference page before scripting against them.
Q: What's worth building first?
A: Start with something read-only that saves you a daily chore. The Recipes page has six, ordered by risk:
| # | Recipe | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Morning brief | Overnight moves, relevant news, and your open positions in one paragraph |
| 2 | Risk watch | Alerts you when your daily-loss headroom drops below a threshold |
| 3 | Trade journal | Turns closed orders into a written journal you can review weekly |
| 4 | Custom screener | Ranks symbols against indicator rules you define |
| 5 | Pre-trade check | Validates size against free margin and distance to your limits before you click |
| 6 | Guarded auto-execution | Places at most one bracketed order per run, on Demo, with a trip wire |
Recipes 1–5 cannot lose you money. Recipe 6 can, which is why it is last and why it defaults to a Demo-type account.
Q: Does the assistant give me trading advice?
A: These tools return data — prices, candles, your balances, your drawdown. The trading decision stays yours. Keep your automations reporting and gating, not deciding.
Q: Is there technical analysis built in?
A: Not over MCP. The in-terminal chat assistant has its own indicator tools, but they are internal to the chat product and are not part of this server. You get raw OHLCV candles from e8_trade_history and compute what you need.
Q: What does this cost me in rate limits?
A: An OAuth connection gets 60 calls per minute and 10,000 per day. API keys carry their own per-key limits.