Skip to main content
AI Fin Hub
Menu

Checklist, in AI in Markets

Broker API Integration Checklist

A trading API is unforgiving because its errors move money. This checklist covers wiring a broker connection correctly before it touches real orders.

12 items. Published May 26, 2026. By AI Fin Hub Research.

Your progress

Move item by item and keep your place

Progress saves locally, so you can work through the page over multiple sessions without resetting your checklist.

0/12 complete

Sections

Work in focused batches instead of one long wall

Section 1

Phase 1: Capability fit

3 items

Section 2

Phase 2: Order safety

3 items

Section 3

Phase 3: Rate limits and resilience

3 items

Section 4

Phase 4: Reconciliation and rollout

3 items

Tips

Small moves that make the checklist easier to finish

Idempotency keys are not optional on a trading API. The first time a timeout makes you retry and you discover the original order already filled, you will wish you had attached a unique ID.
A timeout is not a failure, it is an unknown. Always query order status before retrying, because the safest-looking retry is exactly how you end up double-filled.
Reconcile against the broker on a timer, not just at startup. The broker's record is ground truth, and any drift in your internal state poisons every decision until you detect it.

Run the numbers next

  • Directories Finance MCP Directory

    Security-graded catalog of finance MCP servers — Alpaca, Polygon, Databento, IBKR, Tradier, Tiingo, NautilusTrader. Scope, auth, idempotency, transport.

  • Generators Trading System Blueprinter

    Pick your data source, LLM, broker, storage, risk engine, and logger. Get a Mermaid architecture diagram and a copyable starter file tree — the full stack before you write code.

  • Playgrounds Execution Simulator

    Estimate execution cost in closed form — square-root permanent impact, linear temporary impact, half-spread, and a latency-drift band. See the slippage a naive backtest hides.

Sources

  1. Designing Data-Intensive Applications , Martin Kleppmann, O'Reilly (2017)
  2. Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners , Larry Harris, Oxford University Press (2003)

Keep the topic connected

  • Checklist Paper-to-Live Transition Checklist

    Paper-to-live transition checklist: reconcile fills against real costs, start at minimum size, set kill switches, and verify live matches backtest.

  • Checklist Market Data Vendor Selection Checklist

    Market data vendor checklist: match coverage and resolution, verify point-in-time history, compute true total cost, and check licensing first.

  • Learn MCP (Model Context Protocol)

    Model Context Protocol: Anthropic's open standard for letting LLMs discover and call tools — the interface, why it matters, and finance MCP server checks.

  • Learn Slippage

    Slippage as the gap between expected and executed price: the components (spread, market impact, latency), and how to model each in a backtest.