Connecting providers

Why connect at all?

Building and backtesting in the Lab needs no connection — the engine replays historical prices, and the built-in alt-data bricks (Congress, SEC) use public data. You connect a provider when you want one of two things:

• Live data bricks — option greeks, dealer gamma, IV rank, put/call, unusual flow. These need an options-capable provider. See Live & alt-data.
• A real account view — live equity, positions, and prop-firm rule tracking in The Trader, and the ability for the Watcher to act on your behalf.

The providers

These are the providers you can connect today. Each draws a clean lettered monogram in its brand color on the Connect page; adding more later is a one-line registry change.

Which one do you need?

• Topstep (Prop firm) — a funded futures prop firm, connected through the ProjectX Gateway. It supplies the account and futures capabilities: live equity, positions, prop-firm rule tracking, and futures market data for specific contracts. (Level-2 depth needs a paid market-data add-on.) It does not supply options or fundamentals.
• SnapTrade — one secure link to 20+ brokerages (Schwab, Robinhood, Fidelity, Webull, and more). It supplies account, options, and fundamentals: brokerage positions, option chains and greeks, dealer gamma, IV, and flow. Connect SnapTrade for the alt-data bricks at full strength — no API keys to manage.
• No connection — the congress, sec capabilities are built in. Congress disclosures and SEC EDGAR filings are public data, so those bricks work even signed out of any broker.

What each provider unlocks

Bricks never hard-code a broker. Each live brick declares a capability it needs — a plain string like options or account — and TradeBricks matches that against whatever you have connected. Connect a provider that supplies a capability and every brick needing it turns on at once. This is the capability model, and it’s what keeps strategies portable: a graph using option_greeks declares it needs options, not “Schwab”, so anyone with any options-capable provider can run it unchanged.

How connecting works

Go to the Connect page, pick a provider, and fill in its credential fields. A direct-API key is verified with the provider and then stored encrypted server-side, and the provider flips to connected — no account-size questionnaire; your real account details sync from the provider, so there’s nothing to type in by hand.

1. Open Connect and choose a provider.
2. Enter its fields (e.g. your ProjectX username + API key for Topstep). They’re masked password inputs.
3. The key is sent over HTTPS to a TradeBricks Cloud Function, verified with the provider, and stored encrypted in Google Secret Manager. Only a non-secret marker (your username) is kept in localStorage to show the connection as active.
4. Capabilities light up: every brick needing them is now live, and The Trader can show your account.

// browser localStorage — non-secret marker only:
localStorage["tb-conn-topstep"] = {
  "userName": "your-username",
  "connectedAt": 1718380800000
}
// the API key itself lives ENCRYPTED in Google Secret Manager,
// readable only by your own live-trading worker. deleted on Disconnect.

Disconnecting

Each connected provider has a Disconnect control on the Connect page. Disconnecting deletes the stored credential from Google Secret Manager, clears the local connection marker, and turns off the capabilities it supplied — any brick that needed them goes back to locked. All stored credentials are also deleted when you delete your account.

Related reading

• The live bricks a connection unlocks → Live & alt-data
• Your account, against its rules → The Trader
• Acting on live feeds → The Watcher