Robinhood Crypto

robinhood-mcp

An execution toolkit for the official Robinhood Crypto Trading API, delivered over the Model Context Protocol.

Robinhood's crypto API exposes four order types and nothing else: market, limit, stop_loss, and stop_limit. There is no bracket, no OCO, no trailing stop, no TWAP, no iceberg, no scale-in ladder, no scheduled DCA, no portfolio rebalance. Those are the order types people actually want, and every one of them has the same requirement: something has to keep working after the request returns. A trailing stop that exists only for the duration of one tool call is not a trailing stop. This package synthesizes the thirteen order types Robinhood lacks and runs them as durable background jobs that survive the agent disconnecting, the server restarting, and the machine rebooting. Around that sit ~73 tools across 8 opt-in modules: quotes and holdings, FIFO cost basis and realized P&L, a trade journal, risk limits with an enforced kill switch, and integration diagnostics.

This is not Robinhood Chain, and it is not Robinhood equities. It targets the brokerage Crypto Trading API at trading.robinhood.com, documented at docs.robinhood.com/crypto/trading.

The signing bench — nirholas.github.io/robinhood-mcp

The project site is an interactive Ed25519 signing bench. You assemble a real Robinhood trading request and produce a genuine signature in your own browser — the math runs client-side on Robinhood's published example key, nothing is sent anywhere — then watch it disprove Robinhood's own documentation: their published test vector verifies against a Python dict repr, not the JSON body every client actually sends. It is a single self-contained page in docs/, so it deploys anywhere static.

Deploy your own copy in one click:

Safety

Robinhood publishes no sandbox. There is no paper account, no test environment, no dry-run host. Every order this package can place is real money in a real brokerage account, and there is no way to rehearse. Read this section before you set ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_ENABLE_TRADING=1.

Every guard below is enforced in code, inside the single Executor that all orders pass through, never in a tool description. An instruction in a prompt is a suggestion; a thrown error is not.

Two things about those controls are worth stating plainly, because they are the ones people get wrong.

Autonomous removes the human, not the ceiling. The per-order cap, the cumulative cap, the allowlist and the buy-only flag all still apply in autonomous mode. An unattended agent is exactly the case where a runaway order is most likely and least observed.

The kill switch binds the daemon too. It lives beside the Executor rather than inside the risk tool module, because robinhood-mcp-daemon builds its own Executor and loads no tool modules at all. A halt installed by a module would leave the one unattended process in the system still placing orders. Because the state is read from disk on every order rather than cached, throwing the switch from an MCP session stops a daemon that has been running since before the switch existed. It fails closed: a row that cannot be parsed reads as engaged, because resuming trading over a corrupted row is exactly the failure a kill switch exists to prevent.

Two limits are honest about what they are not. The cumulative cap is a per-process, in-memory counter that resets on restart: it is a runaway-loop brake, not an accounting system or a hard budget. And a durable job's total spend is not capped at all. Per-order caps apply to each order a job places, but a TWAP with 50 slices under a $100 per-order cap can commit $5,000. Size jobs deliberately and check risk_status before starting anything unattended.

Finally, scope the API key itself. Robinhood lets you pick permissions per credential: if you only want reads, do not grant order placement, and the key cannot trade no matter what software holds it. IP allowlisting is also available and worth using.

Install

Requires Node.js 22.5 or newer (the durable job store uses node:sqlite).

Nothing to install ahead of time: MCP clients launch the servers with npx.

1. Create a credential

npx robinhood-keygen

This prints a fresh Ed25519 keypair as JSON on stdout, with instructions on stderr. Then:

1. Register the public key at robinhood.com/account/crypto. This page exists on web classic only, not the mobile app and not the new web UI.
2. Robinhood issues an API key in return. That is ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_API_KEY.
3. Keep the private key as ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_PRIVATE_KEY. It is a base64-encoded 32-byte Ed25519 seed, not a 64-byte expanded keypair and not PKCS#8. Several Ed25519 libraries export seed‖publicKey; pasting that gives 64 bytes and fails every request. Treat the private key like a password: it authorizes trades, and this package never stores or transmits it anywhere except in the signature it computes locally.

If you already have a keypair from elsewhere, verify_keypair (in the dev module) checks that a private key matches the public key you registered, without sending anything anywhere.

2. Add the server to your MCP client

Two binaries ship in the package, and they are separate on purpose.

Read-only. This is the one to start with, and the one to attach to a general-purpose assistant. Paste into claude_desktop_config.json (Claude Desktop), .mcp.json (Claude Code), or your client's equivalent:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "robinhood-crypto": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "robinhood-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_API_KEY": "rh-api-...",
        "ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_PRIVATE_KEY": "your-base64-seed"
      }
    }
  }
}

Ask your assistant: "What is my Robinhood crypto buying power, and what is BTC trading at?"

Trading. A separate entry, because it places real orders:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "robinhood-crypto-trading": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "robinhood-mcp-trading"],
      "env": {
        "ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_API_KEY": "rh-api-...",
        "ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_PRIVATE_KEY": "your-base64-seed",
        "ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_ENABLE_TRADING": "1",
        "ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_MAX_ORDER_USD": "50",
        "ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_MAX_DAILY_USD": "500",
        "ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_SYMBOL_ALLOWLIST": "BTC-USD,ETH-USD"
      }
    }
  }
}

Set the caps to numbers you are comfortable losing. They are the only thing standing between a misunderstood instruction and a real fill.

You can run both entries at once. The data server is safe to leave attached permanently; add the trading server when you intend to trade.

If you have not set credentials yet

The data server still starts. Rather than exiting (which most MCP clients surface only as an opaque "server failed to start"), it comes up with a single get_setup_status tool that reports what is missing and how to fix it. If that is the only tool you see, credentials are not configured: set ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_API_KEY and ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_PRIVATE_KEY, then restart the server and the full tool set appears.

The trading server is deliberately stricter and refuses to start without ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_ENABLE_TRADING=1, so it can never be launched by accident.

Modules

The toolkit is larger than any one agent should see at once. Every tool spends context and adds a wrong option to choose between, which measurably degrades tool selection, so capabilities ship as modules the operator turns on with ROBINHOOD_MCP_MODULES. Only the selected ones are registered.

risk is classified as order-placing because engaging the kill switch pauses running jobs. It cannot itself submit an order.

How selection works:

• Unset loads the default set (market, orders, algo, portfolio, risk), minus anything the server cannot host. That is 52 tools on the trading server and 16 on the data server.
• A comma-separated list loads exactly those: ROBINHOOD_MCP_MODULES=market,orders,risk.
• all loads everything: 73 tools on the trading server.

An unknown module name fails startup rather than being silently dropped, because a typo that quietly removes tools is worse than a server that refuses to start.

Loading everything degrades tool choice. all is useful for a builder exploring the surface and a poor choice for a production agent. Pick the modules the task actually needs. If an agent reports a capability as impossible, have it call list_modules: the tool names the exact ROBINHOOD_MCP_MODULES value that would enable what is missing, so a disabled module is never mistaken for a capability the toolkit lacks.

The data server refuses to load a mutating module (orders, algo, risk) and fails at startup if asked to, so an operator can never believe they enabled execution when they did not.

Full parameter reference for all 73 tools: docs/tools.md.

The thirteen synthetic order types

Each of these is built on top of Robinhood's four primitives by a supervisor that keeps advancing it over time. Every one is started by its own tool with a typed schema, so a missing or misnamed parameter fails at the schema boundary instead of inside the job.

Each tool's description states its own failure modes, which are not the same across strategies. A TWAP with a limit_price can finish short of the full size. An OCO has unavoidable exposure between one leg filling and the other being cancelled, and reports a double fill as failed rather than as success. An iceberg that hits max_duration_minutes cancels its working slice and completes under-filled. Read the tool description before running one for real, and use algo_rebalance_start's dry_run to see the legs before any of them are sent.

This API is spot only, which constrains four of these. There is no borrow and no short position to open, so nothing here shorts:

• algo_mean_reversion_start with side_mode of short_only or both does not open a short. It sells an existing holding into an extreme high and buys it back on reversion. Both modes are rejected at start unless the account already holds enough to cover quantity, and every short entry re-checks the balance before submitting.
• algo_momentum_start with side: "sell" is the same shape: a momentum exit from coins the account already holds, not a short. init refuses the job if the holding does not exist.
• algo_grid_start will not sell coins its own buys have not funded. max_cycles and max_duration_minutes always carry a value (defaults: 100 cycles, 7 days), because a grid with neither never terminates. stop_price is the only path that liquidates: it cancels the resting orders and market-sells grid inventory.
• algo_accumulate_start waits for dips rather than buying on a clock as algo_dca_start does, so it may finish short of target if no qualifying dip arrives before max_duration_minutes. A run that ends short is reported as short.

Durable jobs

A start tool does not execute an algorithm inside the call. It writes a durable job and returns; a supervisor owns execution from then on.

   algo_twap_start ("TWAP 0.5 BTC over 2 hours")
        |
        v
    JobStore (SQLite)  <-->  Supervisor  -->  Strategy.advance()  -->  Executor
                              (tick loop)

That is the whole point: the job outlives the conversation. It survives the agent disconnecting, the MCP server restarting, and the machine rebooting. It also keeps spending money after the chat window is closed, which is why every start tool says so and why algo_cancel_job exists.

Jobs live in a SQLite database at ~/.robinhood-mcp/jobs.db, overridable with ROBINHOOD_MCP_DB. It is under the home directory rather than the working directory so a job survives being started from a different folder and is not accidentally committed to a repo. The kill-switch state lives in the same file, so the switch and the jobs it halts can never disagree about which database is authoritative.

Unattended execution

An MCP server only runs while a client holds it open, so a job started through MCP advances only while that conversation is alive. For unattended execution run the daemon, which owns the same job database:

ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_ENABLE_TRADING=1 \
ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_MAX_ORDER_USD=50 \
npx robinhood-mcp-daemon

Run it under something that restarts it: systemd, launchd, pm2, a container. Restarts are safe by design. Credentials stay on the machine; the daemon talks only to Robinhood.

If jobs exist and look healthy but nothing is happening, the supervisor is not ticking. ops_supervisor_status is the check for that failure, which produces no error at all. A TWAP that is not ticking is not slow, it is stopped.

Crash safety

Getting this wrong means double-filling a real order with real money.

The naive design submits an order and records it afterwards. If the process dies between those two steps, the order exists at Robinhood and the job has no memory of it; on restart the strategy repeats the slice and the user is filled twice.

Instead every order is a three-phase write:

1. Reserve. Generate the client_order_id and persist an intent row before any network call.
2. Submit. POST with that exact id, with retries disabled, since retrying an ambiguous write can double-fill.
3. Settle. Record the response.

On startup the supervisor reconciles every still-pending intent against Robinhood by client_order_id. Found means the order was placed before the crash, so it is adopted and never resubmitted. Conclusively not found means Robinhood never saw it. If the lookup itself did not complete, the intent stays pending and is retried, because an inconclusive answer must never be read as "not found": Robinhood offers no client_order_id query filter, so the lookup is a bounded walk of order history, and abandoning an intent whose order is live would re-place that slice under a fresh id.

After any crash, ops_jobs_pending_intents lists what was left unsettled and journal_reconcile compares the whole local record against Robinhood. Do not resubmit those by hand: reconciliation adopts the order if it exists, and a manual resubmit under a new id is how one intended fill becomes two real ones.

Configuration

See .env.example for a copy-paste starting point. check_environment (in the dev module) reports which of these are set and what each currently does, without printing any secret. risk_limits_export (in the risk module) dumps every enforced limit with the variable that sets it.

v1 vs v2

v2 adds fee-tier data but is not a drop-in replacement. Its holdings, orders, and order-placement endpoints require an account_number query parameter (resolved automatically here), estimated_price moves from /marketdata/ to /trading/, and v2 reports order state pending where v1 reports partially_filled. Code written against one version can fail against the other for any of those reasons. Default is v1; set v2 if you want fee data. ops_api_version explains the differences at runtime.

Examples

Price a trade, then place it

In guarded mode an order tool previews first. A typical exchange:

1. get_best_bid_ask with symbols: ["BTC-USD"] to see the live market.
2. get_trading_pairs with symbols: ["BTC-USD"] to check the quantity increment, because a quantity with too many decimals is rejected.
3. risk_check_order to test the order against every control without placing it. It returns a plain allowed true or false and names the control that would reject it.
4. buy_limit with symbol: "BTC-USD", limit_price: "60000.00", quote_amount: "25.00". Without confirm this returns the exact request that would be sent plus a priced estimate, and places nothing.
5. buy_limit again with the same arguments plus confirm: true. Now it sends.
6. get_order with the returned order id to confirm the fill.

Step 3 matters most for multi-order plans: it fails on paper instead of halfway through with real money already spent.

Accumulate over two hours, then protect the position

Split the entry so it averages across the window rather than paying one spread:

• algo_twap_start with symbol: "BTC-USD", side: "buy", total_quantity: "0.05", slices: 12, duration_minutes: 120.

That returns a job id and returns immediately. Track it with algo_list_jobs, or algo_get_job for the full event history and every order it has placed. Stop it early with algo_cancel_job, remembering that this stops further orders and does not cancel ones already resting: algo_get_job lists those by id for cancel_order.

Once filled, protect the position with an OCO exit pair:

• algo_oco_start with symbol: "BTC-USD", side: "sell", quantity: "0.05", take_profit_price: "72000.00", stop_price: "58000.00".

Both of these outlive the conversation, so run robinhood-mcp-daemon if you want them to keep advancing after you close the chat.

Stop everything

If something looks wrong and you would rather stop than work out why:

• risk_kill_switch_engage with a reason. Every order is refused from the moment it returns, every running job is paused, and the halt survives a restart of both the server and the daemon.
• cancel_order for anything already resting at Robinhood. The kill switch does not cancel those.
• risk_status to see the full picture, then risk_kill_switch_release with confirm: true when the cause no longer applies.

Library use

The signed client works without MCP:

import { RobinhoodCryptoClient, loadCredentials } from 'robinhood-mcp';

const client = new RobinhoodCryptoClient(loadCredentials());
const quote = await client.get('/api/v1/crypto/marketdata/best_bid_ask/', {
  query: { symbol: ['BTC-USD'] },
});
console.log(quote);

Responses are returned exactly as Robinhood sends them. Field names are deliberately not remapped: the published schemas and the community clients disagree in places, and a wrong mapping corrupts data silently while a pass-through stays correct even as the upstream shape changes.

Authentication, and two things that will bite you

Every request carries x-api-key, x-timestamp, and x-signature, where the signature is a detached Ed25519 signature over:

message = api_key + timestamp + path + method + body

concatenated with no separators. Three details matter:

• The private key is a 32-byte seed, not a 64-byte expanded keypair and not PKCS#8. Several Ed25519 libraries export seed‖publicKey; pasting that gives 64 bytes and fails. This package detects that case by name.
• Timestamps are Unix seconds and expire after 30 seconds. Date.now() returns milliseconds; using it directly fails every request. Keep the system clock synced, and use ops_clock_skew when a 401 looks like a bad key but might be a drifting clock.
• The path includes the query string and the trailing slash. Both are signed. Serialize the body once, sign those exact bytes, send those exact bytes: re-serializing changes key order or whitespace and produces a well-formed request with an invalid signature.

When a signature is rejected, explain_signature (in the dev module) shows the exact bytes being signed so another implementation can be compared byte for byte, and diagnose_connection runs every check that distinguishes the common causes of a 401.

Robinhood's published conformance vector is wrong

The docs publish a worked example and invite you to check your signature against it. That vector does not correspond to the JSON body a real client sends. It was generated by signing a Python dict repr: single quotes, spaces after colons, and a different key order than the accompanying table shows:

{'client_order_id': '...', 'side': 'buy', 'symbol': 'BTC-USD', 'type': 'market', ...}

Signing the actual JSON body, which is what every working client and Robinhood's own sample code does at runtime, will not reproduce the published signature. Anyone using that vector as a conformance check will "fix" a correct implementation into a broken one.

Both facts are pinned in tests/signer.test.ts so the quirk stays documented. The signer is verified the sound way instead: Robinhood publishes both halves of an example keypair, and this implementation derives their exact public key from their private key, then round-trips a signature through independent verification.

What this does not do

• No equities or options. This is the crypto API. Robinhood's agentic trading product at agent.robinhood.com/mcp/trading is a separate, equities-only surface with its own OAuth flow, and it is not wrapped here. There are no plans to add stocks or options.
• No private-API scraping. Several community servers drive Robinhood through a browser session or the unauthenticated internal API. This package uses only the documented, signed, supported API.
• No sandbox, because none exists. There is no paper mode to fall back to and none can be added from outside Robinhood. ROBINHOOD_CRYPTO_BASE_URL overrides the host, but there is no test host to point it at. The guards above are the substitute, and they are the only one available.
• No historical candles and no order book depth. Robinhood publishes neither. get_volatility therefore takes a price series you supply rather than fetching one, and estimate_slippage models the quoted spread only, which is a floor on true cost rather than a simulation.
• No cross-venue view. Every derived number (cost basis, realized P&L, drawdown, journal performance) is rebuilt from Robinhood order history alone. Deposits, withdrawals, transfers in from another venue, staking rewards and airdrops are invisible to it, and the affected tools say so in their own descriptions.
• No vendored OpenAPI spec. scripts/fetch-spec.mjs pulls it live, because a vendored copy goes stale silently.

Development

npm install
npm test          # unit and integration tests, no credentials or network
npm run typecheck
npm run build
npm run smoke     # launch both built servers over real stdio and list their tools
npm run test:live # hits the real API; requires credentials; read-only

npm test never touches the network: strategy math, policy enforcement, and reconciliation are tested against a real SQLite store in memory, and the network boundary is the only thing substituted. npm run smoke performs the handshake a real MCP client performs, which catches what the unit suite cannot: a stale dist/, a bad bin shebang, or a module that throws during registration. The live suite is opt-in and read-only, and places no orders.

Design rationale, the layering, and where to add code: docs/architecture.md.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.

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