Guardrails you won’t have to build
If you build an AI that trades or run a broker, you’ll be able to put reTrade in front of every order.
What every order gets
One of four answers (go ahead, cut down, wait for you, stop), naming the rule that decided.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.Limits shared across every AI on the account, so two agents can’t spend the same room twice.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.A receipt the account owner can check offline, signed by each party for its own part.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.Each AI connection has its own key, and every request is signed.
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.
How an AI connects today
reTrade’s connector is an MCP server that the AI app runs on the person’s machine. It holds that AI connection’s key in the system keychain and signs every request.
The AI only ever sees three tools
Built and tested in reTrade’s engine. Not available to the public yet.retrade_holdings- What one account holds now.
retrade_request_order- Ask for one order. reTrade gives one of the four answers and sends what it approves.
retrade_decision_status- Look up an earlier answer, and whether it was sent.
Not exposedApproving an order, changing the person’s rules, pressing Stop or widening the AI’s own limits. Those are the person’s, signed with their own key.
Planned. Plans depend on legal review and broker approvals.A remote connector with OAuth, for hosted AIs such as ChatGPT.
Why buy it, not build it
Every account type and tax rule has to be right: TFSA, RRSP, the superficial-loss and wash-sale rules, and option rules.
It has to stay correct when several AIs act at once, with tamper-evident records.
The rules change: contribution limits alone change every year.
Whoever builds it carries the blame if any of it is wrong.
Investment firms buy this kind of software instead of writing it, for the same reasons.
Designed to run inside your software
The check would add no trip over the internet, and orders wouldn’t have to be sent to reTrade to be checked. Each check would cost almost nothing, the opposite of an AI chat app, where the AI bill can exceed the subscription price.
What we plan to publish
The format for rules and records, with a basic checker: free and open, so any AI or broker can use it. Payments did this for AI shopping with Google’s AP2 protocol, now at the FIDO Alliance.18 We haven’t found an equivalent for brokerage accounts.
The goal: a plug-in a developer can put in front of an AI trading connection in about ten minutes.
Built on public standards
- RFC 9162
- Merkle trees for the append-only record
- RFC 9421
- HTTP message signatures on every AI request
- Ed25519
- Signatures
- RFC 3161
- Timestamps from an independent timestamp authority
- DKIM
- Verified confirmations from real brokers
Partners and certification
We’re looking for two or three design partners.
- Pilot
- Free, 60 to 90 days, on practice trading, with success criteria written down
- Then
- Paid
- Later
- Certification: a yearly audit that says “this AI stays inside its owners’ rules”