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Overview

Connect an AI agent to your NinjaTrader account to trade, analyze, and manage risk in natural language.
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Beta, pre-release. The NinjaTrader MCP server and its trading skills are in beta and aren’t yet generally available. The beta runs on Demo only, which trades simulated money. Live access opens later. Server hostnames, the tool set, the skills, and the onboarding flow may change before launch.

The NinjaTrader MCP server lets an AI agent connect directly to your NinjaTrader account so it can answer questions about your portfolio and act on your behalf: searching contracts, reading live quotes, placing and managing orders, and monitoring risk. Instead of only describing what to do, a connected agent can do it.

It works with any AI client that supports the Model Context Protocol, including Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Codex, and Cursor. See Connect Your AI Agent to get set up.

What’s an MCP?

The Model Context Protocol, or MCP, is an open standard that lets AI agents connect to external apps and services. Instead of just answering questions, an AI with MCP access can take actions on your behalf, in this case querying your accounts and trading futures and event contracts through NinjaTrader.

The NinjaTrader MCP server is a remote server: you connect to it over HTTPS and authorize it with your NinjaTrader credentials through OAuth. There’s nothing to install. See Authentication & Access for how authorization works.

What your agent can do

Once connected, your agent can read your account data and place orders using the available tools. You’re always in control of what you ask it to do. A few examples:

  • Check your account. “What’s the net liquidation value and open P&L on the demo account?”
  • Research the market. “What’s the current quote and margin requirement for the front-month E-mini S&P contract?”
  • Place an order with a bracket. “Buy 1 ESU5 at market with a 20-point profit target and a 10-point stop.”
  • Manage positions and orders. “Flatten all open positions” or “cancel every working order on DEMO12345.”
  • Review performance. “Summarize last week’s trading performance: win rate, average trade, and max drawdown.”
  • Watch for conditions. “Create an alert for when crude oil rises past $80.”
  • Set guardrails. “Set a $500 daily loss auto-liquidation limit on the account.”

These examples are illustrative. The agent uses the same tools and permissions described in the Tools reference—it can’t do anything through the MCP server that those tools don’t expose.

What your agent can access

When you connect an agent, it authenticates as you and operates within your NinjaTrader account’s permissions. Each tool requires a specific access level on your account, enforced server-side:

CapabilityAccess requiredExample tools
Profile & subscriptionsUsers: Readuser_profile
Accounts, balances & historyAccounting: Readcash_history, daily_balance_history, performance_summary
Reading positions & ordersPositions: Read, Orders: Readmy_portfolio, order_history, fill_history, order_details
Market data & contractsPrices: Read, ContractLibrary: Readmarket_snapshot, market_history, dom_snapshot, search_contracts
Reading risk settingsRisks: Readrisk_settings
Placing & managing ordersOrders: Full Access. close_position also needs Positions: Read.place_order, modify_order, cancel_order, close_position
Changing risk settingsRisks: Full Accessupdate_risk_settings
Creating & dismissing alertsAlerts: Full Accesscreate_alert, dismiss_alert

Read-only tools can only query data. Write tools—order placement, risk changes, and alerts—can change your account. All of them except create_alert carry the MCP protocol’s destructive-action hint, so most clients pause for approval before running them. create_alert carries a non-destructive, idempotent write hint instead. The full per-tool list is in the Tools reference.

Environments

The MCP server hosts a single environment per endpoint — Live or Demo — with separate URLs and completely separate accounts. A Demo account exists only on the Demo server. A Live account exists only on the Live server.

You can connect both at once, but each conversation should stay on one environment: once your agent resolves an account on a server, every follow-up call—quotes, orders, history—must use that same server. Crossing between Live and Demo either fails with “account not found” or silently targets the wrong environment’s account. When in doubt, tell your agent explicitly whether you mean Live or Demo.

Start on Demo to get comfortable with how your agent behaves before connecting a Live account that trades real money.

Risks

You are ultimately responsible for the trades your AI agent places in your account. When you use an agent to place orders, all trading decisions are yours. Depending on how you’ve configured your client, the agent may place trades without asking for confirmation on each one—review your client’s settings so you know whether it pauses for approval.

AI agents can make mistakes, misinterpret instructions, and act on incomplete or outdated information. Use Demo first, keep risk limits in place, and monitor account activity. See your client’s documentation for how to review or require approval of actions before they run. Read Safety & Disclosures before connecting a Live account.

Next steps