--- title: "Bring your own AI via MCP · Trado Strategy Lab" description: "Connect Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT to Trado Strategy Lab over MCP. Your agent builds strategies, runs backtests and reads reports for free; runs use credits." canonical: "https://algo.trado.trade/bring-your-own-ai" lastModified: "2026-10-06" --- # Prefer your own agent? Connect it. The Lab speaks MCP, the open protocol AI assistants use to call tools. Connect Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT or any MCP client with a personal access token, and your agent can build strategies, run backtests and optimizations, and read the reports. The AI is yours and costs nothing extra. ## What your agent can do The MCP server exposes the same tools the in-app Copilot uses, limited to what the token's scopes allow. - Create, validate, update and version strategies, and write custom indicators. - Run backtests, optimizations and parameter sweeps, and run studies that measure what happens after a named condition across the whole universe. - Read reports, trades, equity curves and insights, and summarise whole batches of runs. - Check what a run would cost before it is queued, and read your credits and limits. - Create and watch paper deployments. ## How to connect Sign in, open Settings → Tokens, and create a token with the scopes you want: `read`, `run` (strategies, runs, optimizations) or `deploy` (paper deployments). The token acts as you, in your own lab. Then add the Lab's MCP endpoint to your client. With Claude Code, for example: `claude mcp add --transport http trado-lab https://algo.trado.trade/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer "`. Other clients take the same URL and bearer token in their MCP settings. Tell your agent to call `get_agent_guide` first: it is a short briefing on the Lab's data, strategy format, limits and safety rules. ## Safe by design - **Scopes.** A token sees only the tools its scopes allow. A read-only token cannot start a run. - **No live trading.** Tokens can manage paper deployments only. Approving a live deployment needs you, in a browser session. - **Spend checks.** Agents can validate a run or search to see its problems and its credit price before queueing anything. - **Rate limits** per token, so a runaway agent cannot flood the Lab. Use one token per project and revoke it any time. ## What it costs Connecting your own AI is free: you pay your AI provider whatever you already pay them, and the Lab charges nothing for the connection or for reading. The backtests and optimizations your agent starts use credits at the same prices as runs you start yourself. See [pricing](https://algo.trado.trade/pricing.md). ## Bring-your-own-AI questions ### Which AI assistants work? Claude, Cursor and ChatGPT, and any other client that supports MCP over streamable HTTP with bearer-token authentication. ### Why use my own agent instead of the Copilot? If you already pay for an assistant you like, it can use the Lab at no extra AI cost, and it keeps the context of your other work. The in-app Copilot is there for people who want everything in one place. ### How do I stop an agent's access? Revoke its token in Settings → Tokens. The Lab refuses a revoked token from then on. ## Next steps - [Join the waitlist](https://algo.trado.trade/waitlist) - [See pricing](https://algo.trado.trade/pricing) ## Related - [AI strategy builder, no code needed](https://algo.trado.trade/ai-strategy-builder.md): Describe a trading idea in plain words and the Copilot drafts the rules. Refine them in a form or on a canvas, or write Python. No code required. - [Paper trading for crypto strategies](https://algo.trado.trade/paper-trading.md): Take a backtested strategy to paper trading in one click. The same rules run on live Binance prices; going live is a separate step you approve. - [Learn algo trading with AI](https://algo.trado.trade/learn/learn-algo-trading-with-ai.md): Forums and videos cannot explain your own strategy; an AI that reads your actual runs can. What to ask, a learning loop, and where AI needs checking. - [Pricing: pay for the work you run](https://algo.trado.trade/pricing.md): Building strategies is free. Backtests, optimizations, Copilot replies and deployments use credits, priced by the work, and you see the price before you run.