Live · trades itself every 20 min

Bryan's Autonomous
Robinhood Claude Agent

A Claude agent that researches, decides, and places real trades in a small Robinhood account — completely hands-off. No human in the trading loop, by design.

$5,000 fun-money sleeve 20 min cadence, M–F Sonnet polls · Opus decides 0 humans in the loop
The idea

An AI that trades on its own

Most "AI trading" is a human clicking buttons an LLM suggested. This is the opposite: the agent runs unattended on an always-on machine, wakes up on a schedule during market hours, pulls live account and market data, reasons about it against a written mandate, and executes its own buys and sells with real money.

The whole point is to take the emotion out — Bryan is deliberately removed from the trading loop. The account is a firewalled, high-risk "fun money" sleeve, completely separate from the serious long-term portfolio. A total loss here is tuition, not damage. The system is built so discipline — stops, position caps, a cash reserve, "never chase" rules — is enforced by code and a mandate, not willpower.

🧠

It reasons, then acts

Cheap model triages every cycle; the hard trade calls get escalated to a frontier model that returns a concrete order with a confidence score.

🛡️

Guardrails in code

Per-position size caps, a mandatory cash reserve, a stop on every open position, and a "never chase a runaway" rule — all written down and enforced each cycle.

📲

Quiet by default

It logs every cycle to a file and only pings Bryan on Telegram when something actually matters — a trade or an escalation.

🔁

Stateless & honest

Each run trusts the live account state, the mandate, and the trade log — not its own memory. It re-derives the world every 20 minutes.

Architecture · Part 1

01The machine & the wiring

Three pieces of infrastructure make autonomy possible: an always-on computer to run on, a broker connection it can act through, and a notification channel it can reach Bryan on. A separate laptop is where the human side of the work happens.

The minialways-on host

A Mac mini that never sleeps

The agent lives here. It's the one machine where the broker connection is authenticated, so every autonomous cycle runs locally on it — not in the cloud. It's always on, always logged in, ready to fire on schedule.

Robinhood MCPbroker connection

The hands — a live brokerage link

A Model Context Protocol server connects the agent to Robinhood. Through it the agent reads portfolio value, positions, buying power, live quotes and fundamentals — and places, reviews, and cancels real orders. Every order is reviewed before it's placed.

Telegram MCPthe voice

The mouth — a private channel

A second MCP server lets the agent message Bryan on Telegram. It stays silent on routine "nothing to do" cycles and speaks up only for meaningful events: a trade executed, a stop fired, or an escalation that needs a human decision.

The laptophuman workbench

Where the thesis is authored

Separately, Bryan and Claude work on the laptop to refine strategy. The output is a plain-text mandate file — the rulebook the agent reads at the start of every cycle. Change the strategy by editing one file; the running agent picks it up on its next run. Strategy and execution are cleanly decoupled.

orders ⇅ state market data ↓ alerts ↑ 📈 Robinhood MCP broker — reads state, places orders 🔎 Research & tape quotes, fundamentals, SPY/QQQ/VIX 📲 Telegram MCP alerts Bryan when it matters 💻 Laptop Bryan + Claude iterate strategy ↻ wiki + mandate 🖥️ THE MINI always-on host runs the loop · every 20 min
// the mini runs everything · the laptop feeds strategy in from the side · broker, research & alerts fan out northbound
Architecture · Part 2

02The autonomous loop

The engine is a Claude Code "routine" — a scheduled task that runs on the mini every 20 minutes during market hours, Monday to Friday. Each run is a fresh, stateless agent that does the same disciplined checklist and then goes back to sleep.

step 1📊

Pull state

Portfolio value, open positions, settled buying power, plus the broad tape — S&P, Nasdaq, VIX — to read the day's regime.

step 2🛑

Stops first

Before anything else, every open position is checked against its stop. A breach triggers an exit and a Telegram alert — no exceptions.

step 3🔬

Escalate the hard call

If a real trade is on the table, the cheap model hands the live data to a frontier-model analyst, which returns a concrete order + a 0–1 confidence.

step 4

Act & log

Only acts on high confidence and inside the guardrails. Reviews every order, then writes a one-line entry to the trade log.

🧩

Two models, on purpose. A fast, inexpensive model (Sonnet) drives every routine polling cycle — most cycles are "nothing to do," and that should be cheap. When a genuine decision appears, it delegates the reasoning to a frontier model (Opus) acting as the analyst. You only pay for deep thinking when there's actually something to think about.

What we had to change to make it truly autonomous

By default, an AI agent is blocked from spending real money on its own — a safety classifier intercepts any agent-chosen financial transaction and demands human confirmation. That's the right default. To let this account run hands-off, two deliberate changes were made, scoped to this one machine and this one account:

📝

An explicit allow-list

The order-placing tools were added, by hand, to the agent's local settings file. Only the human can grant this — the agent cannot authorize itself.

🔓

A trusted run mode

The routine runs in a permission mode that trusts the pre-approved allow-list, so the scheduled agent can place its own orders without a human clicking "confirm" every cycle.

🎯

One account only

Autonomy is bound to a single dedicated account flagged for agent trading. The agent literally cannot route an order to any other account.

trade-log.md — a real cycle: the rating gate at work
# a name can have a clean chart and still get blocked — on purpose:
14:56 no action  SPY -0.16%  QQQ -0.85%  (tape softening)
        positions above stops   HTFL +2.4% · ABCL +7.2%
        candidate: a watchlist name printing a clean intraday base
        rating gate: not on the approved-to-initiate set
        → blocked before analysis. a good chart ≠ permission to buy.
        decision: stand down. only book-greenlit names get opened.

Most cycles log "no action" — the system choosing not to force a trade. The hard rule: a clean setup and high model confidence are necessary but not sufficient — a name also has to be on the research book's approved list before a single share is bought. That restraint is the whole feature.

The strategy

The thesis: AI Discovery Singularity

A forward-looking bet on the downstream adoption of AI — not the companies building AI infrastructure, but the ones using AI to accelerate real-world, high-growth verticals.

The method: track where the AI capability frontier is heading, then buy the public companies positioned to monetize it early — a signal-to-beneficiary play. Every candidate is graded on one hard question: does AI demonstrably drive the P&L, or is it just "AI in the pitch deck"? The four lanes:

🧬

Drug discovery

AI-native platforms designing molecules and antibodies faster than the lab-and-luck era ever could.

🩻

Imaging & diagnostics

Models that read scans, flag disease, and turn imaging into earlier, cheaper, more accurate calls.

❤️

Intervention & monitoring

AI-driven decision support and continuous monitoring where the algorithm is the reimbursed product.

🤖

Physical AI

Robotics, autonomy, and machine vision — intelligence moving out of the datacenter and into the world.

Deliberately excluded: AI buildout — chips, memory, datacenters, power — and any name already held in the household's main portfolio. This sleeve's job is to diversify away from a buildout-heavy book, not double down on it. If everyone's crowding the same trade, that's a reason to look elsewhere.
💬

How the thesis evolves. Strategy isn't frozen. It's refined in conversation — Bryan and Claude pressure-test ideas, react to the tape and to news, and sharpen the edges. When the thinking shifts, Claude writes the new view into the wiki on the mini and updates the mandate file. The next 20-minute cycle simply reads the new rules and trades them. The conversation is the control panel.

The book

What it's tracking right now

A focused watchlist across the four lanes, with a few small live positions. Sizes are intentionally tiny — early-clinical names are binary, so each is sized to survive a 50%+ single-event drawdown.

🗓 Research book last updated June 24, 2026

📌 Positions it holds

TickerCompany — why we own itLaneBought @Stop
HTFLHeartFlow — AI coronary analysis; the algorithm is the reimbursed product (FFRCT + plaque)Imaging / Interv.17 sh @ $35.00$27
ABCLAbCellera — AI antibody-discovery platform, bought near net cash with free clinical optionalityDrug discovery75 sh @ $5.87$4.25
Both held on the agentic account. Every position carries a stop from the moment it opens; sizes are deliberately small.

👀 On the watchlist

TickerCompanyLaneReadEntry zoneWhat it's waiting for
ABSIAbsci — generative de-novo AI drug designDrug discoverybuy the dip$6–7ABS-201 efficacy proof (2H’26); don’t chase the gap
AURAurora — driverless freightPhysical AIhold · staged$5.00–5.75H2 truck ramp on cadence + dilution cleared
CGNXCognex — edge-AI machine visionPhysical AIhold · staged$52–57robotics breakeven, or a dip to the low-$50s
TEMTempus AI — precision-medicine data moatDiagnosticshold$42–48GAAP profit / recurring pharma data deals
BFLYButterfly — AI handheld ultrasound (the Midjourney chip)Imaginghold$5.50–6.50a 2nd OEM deal, or real Midjourney scanner volume
IRTCiRhythm — AI cardiac monitoringMonitoringhold$95–105predictive-AI monetized / MCT clearance
RDNTRadNet — AI-augmented imaging centersImaginghold$50–54DeepHealth GAAP-positive + organic ARR >25%
SYMSymbotic — AI warehouse automationPhysical AIhold$32–35software/RaaS mix >10–15%, or GreenBox scales
CERTCertara — AI biosimulation for drug devDrug discoveryholdpost-Q2 (Aug 5)quantified AI/NVIDIA revenue + bookings inflect
RXRXRecursion — AI drug discovery at scaleDrug discoveryspec onlyon a readouta clean clinical readout (REC-1245, 2H’26)
SDGRSchrödinger — physics-based molecular designDrug discoveryspec onlyon re-accelsoftware growth back to double digits
OUSTOuster — lidar for autonomy & roboticsPhysical AIavoid now$28–33stop the freefall first, then a recurring-software line
Reads & entries from the agent's research book (last updated 2026-06-24). A snapshot that changes as the agent trades — not investment advice.