User guide

How to use CoatifyAI — step by step

A practical walkthrough covering account setup, brokerage connections, the Advisor workspace, and the Market & Crypto agents. Work through the sections in order your first time, then use this page as a reference whenever you add a new portfolio or brokerage.

Open AccountOpen AdvisorTechnical agent guide

On this page

1 · Getting started

Create your account, pick a plan, and connect a brokerage

Before the Advisor or the agents can do anything useful, they need at least one real portfolio to reason about. The fastest path: sign up, wait for approval, connect Coinbase or Alpaca, and you're ready in about five minutes.

1
Create an account
Sign up on the sign-in page. New accounts go through a short admin approval step — you'll see a pending-approval message the first time you sign in. Once approved, you'll be able to access the full dashboard, agent, and advisor views.
2
Pick the plan that fits
Your plan controls how many brokerage connections you can have. Desk allows 1 connection, Advisor allows 2, and Allocator allows 3. You can upgrade later from the pricing page — existing connections are preserved.
3
Connect at least one brokerage
The agents and the advisor need real holdings to work against. Connect Coinbase (for crypto) or Alpaca (for equities + ETFs) from the Account page using your API credentials. Binance.US is also supported for crypto.
4
Open the Advisor or an agent
Once a brokerage is connected, you can talk to the Advisor about your portfolio or configure the Market / Crypto agent to manage a sleeve. The Advisor is read-only and answers questions; the agents actually place trades.

2 · Connect accounts

Connecting a brokerage

Every brokerage connection is scoped to one provider (Coinbase, Alpaca, Binance.US). Your plan caps the total number — upgrade from Pricing if you need more. None of your keys leave our servers; we store them encrypted and only call the broker's API with them.

Coinbase (crypto)
Before you start
  • •An Advanced Trade API key with Trade + View permissions
  • •The IP whitelist OFF — our servers rotate across multiple egress IPs
Steps
  1. 1Sign in to Coinbase and go to Settings → API → New API Key.
  2. 2Select the default portfolio, grant View and Trade permissions (no Transfer needed), and save the generated API key + passphrase.
  3. 3On the CoatifyAI Account page, click Connect under Coinbase, paste the API key, passphrase, and label.
  4. 4The connection validates against your live account and pulls current holdings automatically. Any immediate errors will show inline below the form.
Alpaca (equities & ETFs)
Before you start
  • •An Alpaca live or paper trading account
  • •API key + secret from Alpaca's dashboard (Generate new key)
Steps
  1. 1On the Account page, click Connect under Alpaca.
  2. 2Paste your API key ID and secret, then choose whether this is a live or paper account.
  3. 3The connection validates instantly and pulls your current positions, cash balance, and buying power.
  4. 4If you use OAuth instead of raw keys, the same button routes to the OAuth consent flow and back — no credentials leave your browser.
Binance.US (crypto)
Before you start
  • •A Binance.US account with SPOT trading enabled
  • •API key + secret with SPOT read + trade scopes
  • •The droplet IP whitelisted on the key (see the banner on the connect form for the current IP)
Steps
  1. 1Create the API key on Binance.US with SPOT trading enabled. Lock it to the IP shown on the CoatifyAI connect form.
  2. 2On the Account page, click Connect under Binance.US and paste the API key + secret.
  3. 3If the App Platform egress IP is blocked (expected if you whitelisted only the droplet), the connection is still persisted — the first holdings sync runs from the trading server within ~5 minutes.
  4. 4After the first sync lands, the Binance sleeve appears on the Crypto Agent page and you can enable trading.
Tip: Once connected, the Account page shows a table of every active brokerage with Sync and Remove actions. Click Sync to force an immediate holdings refresh (useful right after you place a manual trade in the broker's UI).

3 · Advisor page

Upload a portfolio and talk to the Advisor

The Advisor is a CFA-level AI grounded in your actual holdings. It reads your mandate, your uploaded research, and your conversation history — and never places trades. Every portfolio has its own workspace with persistent memory.

Uploading a portfolio

Five steps from empty to first conversation

1
Open the Advisor page
Click Advisor in the top nav. If you have no portfolios yet, you'll see an empty-state prompt to import from the Dashboard or upload a CSV.
2
Click Upload new portfolio
In the top-right of the Advisor workspace header, next to the Update holdings button. The Upload new portfolio button opens an inline form.
3
Name the portfolio and pick a starting strategy
The name is required (e.g. "Roth IRA", "Taxable Brokerage", "Spouse 401k"). The strategy dropdown picks the target allocations and roles the Advisor will anchor its recommendations to. You can change it later.
4
Drop a CSV or PDF into the drop zone
CSVs should have columns: ticker, name, shares, price, sector. PDF brokerage statements are also supported — the AI extracts holdings from them automatically. The drop zone activates once the portfolio name is filled in.
5
Wait for the success pill, then pick the new portfolio in the sidebar
On success the page reloads and the new portfolio appears in the left-hand sidebar. Click it to open its workspace. Each portfolio gets its own conversations, mandate, and reports.

Advisor tabs

Every tool inside the workspace

Advisor Chat

A CFA-level conversation grounded in your actual holdings. Ask about stress tests, sector exposure, rebalancing, macro impact, or specific trade ideas.

Ask questions like "What's my biggest concentration risk?" or "If oil spikes 20%, how does my portfolio behave?"
Upload research PDFs from the Files tab — the Advisor will pull context from them for its next reply.
Use the Mandate template picker or write your own. Mandates are a hard override — the Advisor won't suggest bonds or diversification if you've told it to stay thematic.
Monthly Update

Generate a comprehensive monthly review with macro context, attribution, rebalance guidance, and specific trim / add candidates.

Run this once a month to regenerate the projection anchor. If the anchor is older than 14 days, other tabs will show a stale-anchor warning.
The output is persisted as a Report you can return to later.
Rebalance Monitor

Shows current vs target allocation by sector and role, flags drift, and suggests specific rebalance trades.

Use this before submitting large contributions so you deploy into the most under-allocated sleeve.
Pair it with Trade Watchlist to see which specific tickers are candidates for the next add / trim.
Trade Watchlist

The Advisor's short list of tickers to add, trim, or watch, based on your strategy, mandate, and current holdings.

Each item has an advisor score and a short thesis. Hover or click for the full rationale.
Items flow from chat and monthly-update outputs, so the list evolves as you have more conversations.
Factor Analysis

Fama-French 5 + Momentum factor attribution for the portfolio — tells you how much of your returns are explained by market beta, size, value, profitability, investment, and momentum tilts.

Needs ~18 aligned months of holdings history. Newer portfolios show a coverage warning until there's enough data.
Use it to sanity-check your mandate: a "growth" mandate should skew toward market beta + momentum, not value.
Files

Upload research documents, earnings reports, or analyst notes. The Advisor reads them and incorporates them into chat answers.

PDFs, Word documents, and plain text are all supported. Keep files under ~50 pages each for best results.
Files are scoped to the portfolio workspace — uploads here won't leak into other portfolios.
Reports

Persisted monthly updates and on-demand reports you can re-read or export. Every report captures the exact state of the portfolio when it was generated.

Use the Downloads tab to export any report as a formatted PDF you can share with an accountant or co-trustee.
Projections

Forward-looking scenarios that roll the current portfolio forward under different regime assumptions.

Projections anchor off the latest Monthly Update — if the anchor is stale, regenerate the monthly first.

4 · Market agent

Autonomous equity & ETF management

The Market Agent manages one or more Alpaca-backed sleeves through a four-layer pipeline: deterministic scoring, LLM portfolio manager, LLM critic, and deterministic safety gates. It respects your strategy's role + sector targets, tracks wash-sale windows, and enforces position-count + daily loss caps.

1
Connect Alpaca first
The Market Agent needs a live or paper Alpaca connection. Set this up on the Account page if you haven't already.
2
Open the Market Agent page
The top-nav link opens a view with one card per sleeve. Each sleeve is tied to one portfolio + one brokerage connection.
3
Pick a strategy
Strategy sets the target sector + role allocation the agent steers toward. Options include Unique Opportunities, Select, Growth, Income, Balanced, and more. Change it later from the Account page or directly from the sleeve card.
4
Set autonomy mode + execution level
Autonomy controls how much the agent decides on its own vs asks for approval. Execution level throttles the frequency of trades from conservative to aggressive. Start at the lower end while you build trust.
5
Run a test pass before going live
The test-pass button runs the full decision pipeline without placing orders. Review the proposed trades, regime analysis, and risk budgets in the preview. If it looks sensible, enable live execution.
6
Monitor the live queue + capital cards
Once live, the sleeve card shows Buying Power, Invested Capital, Enabled Capital, and the execution feed. These cards update in near-real-time as fills land.
7
Use Market Diagnostics for the full reasoning
The Market Diagnostics page shows the full decision packet: regime, playbook, top opportunities, critic pass, counterfactuals, and optimizer state. Open it any time you want to know why the agent took or skipped a specific trade.
What it trades
Stocks and ETFs through Alpaca. Extended-hours aware. Respects wash-sale windows and daily loss caps.
What it won't do
Short sell, trade options, or use margin beyond your brokerage settings. It also won't open new positions once the daily-loss circuit breaker has fired.
Where to look
Market Agent for live status, Market Diagnostics for the full decision packet, and the Dashboard for P&L attribution.

5 · Crypto agent

24/7 crypto automation across Coinbase and Binance.US

The Crypto Agent evaluates dozens of candidates per cycle, runs a structural candle gate before every entry, and enforces regime-adaptive stop-loss floors the LLM cannot override. Learning state is portfolio-scoped — each sleeve has its own memory, counterfactuals, and improvement-agent config.

1
Connect Coinbase (or Binance.US)
The Crypto Agent needs a direct broker connection. Coinbase Advanced Trade is the primary venue; Binance.US is also supported and runs as a separate sleeve.
2
Open the Crypto Agent page
Each connected crypto broker shows up as its own sleeve card. Coinbase and Binance sleeves are independent — they have their own capital, their own scorer, and their own improvement-agent memory.
3
Pick a strategy + autonomy level
Same knobs as the Market Agent. The Crypto strategy bundles (day_trader, etc.) drive how aggressively the deterministic scoring engine ranks candidates and how tightly the stop-loss floors bind.
4
Review the candidate universe
The Crypto Agent scores dozens of candidates per cycle. The Overview tab shows the top-ranked names and which ones cleared the structural gates (candle, score floor, stop proximity, participation cap).
5
Monitor positions + capital cards in real time
Capital cards (Buying Power, Invested, Enabled) refresh via a WebSocket feed — no page reload needed. Position cards update sub-second on fills thanks to the Coinbase user-channel feed.
6
Use Crypto Diagnostics for deeper analysis
The Crypto Diagnostics page shows regime, sleeve state, support map, counterfactual learning, and the decision engine. Use it to debug unexpected behavior or to confirm the improvement system is cycling.
7
Give it 3-4 weeks and 50+ round-trips to calibrate
The learning system — counterfactual resolver, setup-level expectancy, improvement-agent retrains — needs a real sample size to produce signal. Resist the urge to retune aggressively in the first week.
What it trades
Spot crypto pairs on Coinbase Advanced Trade and Binance.US. Universe is filtered by 24h dollar-volume floor and structural candle gates.
Safety layers
Candle gate (dump / EMA / VWAP / structural), score floor, stop-proximity buffer, deterministic critic, and a daily-P&L circuit breaker.
Where to look
Crypto Agent for live status, and Crypto Diagnostics for the decision engine, support map, and counterfactuals.

Common questions

Quick answers to the things people ask on day one

Can I run the Advisor without connecting a brokerage?
You can upload a CSV or PDF on the Advisor page itself using the Upload new portfolio button in the workspace header. That creates a manual portfolio with no live broker tie — perfect for one-off analysis of an account you can't or don't want to connect.
Do the agents and the Advisor share portfolios?
Yes. Every portfolio — whether imported via CSV, connected to a broker, or uploaded through the Advisor — lives in one central Portfolio table. The Advisor, the agents, and the Dashboard all read from it. The Advisor is always read-only; only the agents place trades.
How do I remove a connected brokerage?
On the Account page, scroll to the connected-brokerages table and click Remove. The connection + any sleeves tied to it are deleted. Your portfolios and their conversation / report history are kept unless you explicitly delete them.
What if I want to pause an agent?
Use the autonomy toggle on the sleeve card or the emergency-stop control on the diagnostics page. Autonomy off means no new buys; stop-loss and protective exits still fire. Emergency stop blocks all new orders until re-enabled.
Anything missing? Tell us what else you wanted answered — we'll fold common follow-ups into this page over time.