KRONOS TRADING BOT LAUNCH CHECKLIST Ken Designers ยท kendesigners.com/articles/kronos-ai-trading-bot-guide/ Educational planning aid. Not financial, investment or legal advice. Write your answers next to each line. Do not move to the next stage until every box in the current stage is ticked. --------------------------------------------------------------- STAGE 0 - DECIDE BEFORE YOU BUILD (day 1) --------------------------------------------------------------- [ ] Market and timeframe (one only): [ ] Maximum money I could lose completely without real harm: [ ] Criteria to go live (hit rate, drawdown, weeks of paper results): [ ] Criteria to switch it off (drawdown level, losing weeks, gap vs backtest): [ ] Am I building a personal bot, a tool for others, or a client project? --------------------------------------------------------------- STAGE 1 - DATA --------------------------------------------------------------- [ ] Source and its terms of use checked (storing / redistributing allowed?) [ ] Only closed candles are used [ ] No missing periods, or gaps are handled [ ] No duplicate timestamps [ ] Time zone is consistent (store in UTC) --------------------------------------------------------------- STAGE 2 - BACKTEST --------------------------------------------------------------- [ ] Walk-forward: the model never sees data after the decision time [ ] Fees and slippage included on every trade: fee ____ slippage ____ [ ] Compared with buy-and-hold over the same period [ ] Maximum drawdown recorded: ____ and I could live through it [ ] At least 100 trades, or I accept the result is weak evidence [ ] Re-run with a different random seed - result still holds [ ] Re-run with double fees - result still holds [ ] Tested on a different year - result still holds [ ] Tested on a different asset - result still holds [ ] Final held-out months tested once, at the end [ ] Every variation tried is written down, including failures --------------------------------------------------------------- STAGE 3 - PAPER TRADING (at least several weeks) --------------------------------------------------------------- [ ] Runs on an always-on server, not a laptop [ ] API keys in a .env file, never in code or GitHub [ ] Kill switch tested [ ] Stale-data check skips trading [ ] Every decision, veto and order written to the journal [ ] Alert if no cycle has run for 2 hours [ ] Weekly comparison of paper results vs backtest: week 1 ____ week 2 ____ week 3 ____ week 4 ____ --------------------------------------------------------------- STAGE 4 - GOING LIVE (start small) --------------------------------------------------------------- [ ] Trade-only keys: NO withdrawal permission [ ] Keys restricted to the server's IP address (if the venue supports it) [ ] Hard limits: max position ____ max daily loss ____ max trades/day ____ [ ] No leverage, no shorting while learning [ ] Positions reconciled with the exchange every cycle [ ] Client order IDs used, so retries cannot duplicate orders [ ] Grok news veto fails safe (unreadable reply = no new trades) [ ] Grok Bot (or a person) reviews the journal every morning [ ] Starting capital is a small fraction of the planned amount: ____ --------------------------------------------------------------- STAGE 5 - SERVER SECURITY --------------------------------------------------------------- [ ] SSH keys only, password login disabled [ ] Firewall allows SSH only [ ] Automatic security updates enabled [ ] Bot runs as a separate non-root user [ ] Nightly backups stored off the server [ ] Restore from backup tested once --------------------------------------------------------------- STAGE 6 - BEFORE CHARGING ANYONE (SaaS, signals or client work) --------------------------------------------------------------- [ ] Product never holds customer funds or withdrawal-capable keys [ ] No promised or implied returns in any marketing [ ] Full, unedited, timestamped forecast/track record is public [ ] Licences checked: Kronos (MIT), plus every library (AGPL/GPL?) [ ] Data provider terms allow commercial use [ ] Kenya: spoken to a capital markets lawyer about CMA licensing (investment adviser / intermediary service platform) [ ] Crypto: current status of VASP Act 2025 licensing checked [ ] Privacy policy and Data Protection Act obligations covered [ ] Terms of service with risk disclosures written Notes: