Ensuring Reliable Trades Through Routine Capability Verification
Routine capability verification lets trading agents confirm fresh market data, venue health and account limits before each workflow, reducing errors and risk.
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- 01Capability verification confirms market data freshness, venue connectivity and current account limits before any action.
- 02Running a check prevents orders from being sent to offline venues or exceeding owner‑signed limits.
- 03Emergency‑stop signals are detected early, allowing the agent to pause safely.
- 04Explicit status checks distinguish timeouts from true order failures, enabling correct error handling.
- 05Consistent verification supports robust risk management and reduces cascading system failures.
Agents must verify their capability status before each workflow to ensure that the information they act on is current and that operational constraints are respected. This simple step checks market data freshness, venue availability and account limits, preventing costly mistakes.
What Does a Capability Verification Cover?
A verification aggregates several authoritative signals. It confirms that market data sources provide timestamps and freshness, that the execution venue reports an online state, and that the account’s balances and owner‑signed limits are up to date. It also surfaces any active emergency stop that may have revoked the calling key.
- The source, timestamp and freshness of market data.
- The online or offline state of the execution venue.
- The current account balance and owner‑signed limits.
- The presence of an emergency stop or key revocation.
How is market data freshness determined?
Agents query the market data endpoint for a timestamp and compare it to the current system time. If the difference exceeds a predefined freshness window, the data is considered stale and the workflow is halted.
Why Is Verification Critical for Enforcing Risk Limits?
Owner‑signed limits such as daily notional, order size or loss caps are only enforceable when the agent knows the latest account state. Without a fresh check, an agent may unintentionally exceed a limit, leading to order rejection or unauthorized exposure.
A limit breach is a systemic risk that can be avoided by a simple status verification step.
What happens if a limit is breached after an order is sent?
The venue may reject the order, but the agent may only learn of the rejection after a timeout. By verifying limits first, the agent avoids sending the order altogether.
How Does Verification Prevent Execution Errors?
When a venue experiences downtime, orders sent without a prior status check may be queued, rejected, or silently dropped. A timeout does not prove failure; it only indicates a lack of response. A pre‑check surfaces the venue’s unavailable state, allowing the agent to pause or reroute safely.
- 01Query the runtime status endpoint for venue health.
- 02Validate market data freshness before price‑sensitive decisions.
- 03Confirm that no emergency stop is active for the calling key.
What Should an Agent Do When Status Is Unfavorable?
If any component of the status is unfavorable, the agent should halt the workflow, log the condition and optionally trigger a back‑off or alert. It must not place orders until the status returns to normal and any emergency stop is cleared by the owner.
How Often Should Verification Be Performed?
Verification should occur at the start of every distinct workflow, including each new order, position adjustment or risk‑limit evaluation. Even rapid, automated loops benefit from a fresh check because market conditions and venue health can change in seconds.
What Are the Limits of Capability Verification?
Verification reduces risk but cannot eliminate all uncertainty. Market data may still contain outliers, venues can recover unpredictably, and owner‑signed limits may be updated between checks. Agents must combine status verification with robust error handling and owner oversight.
Where Can I Find More Guidance?
The Key Alerts Every Autonomous Trading Agent Should Monitor article outlines essential signals. The Essential Risk Limits Every AI Trading Agent Should Enforce piece details limit configuration. For a complete checklist, see the How a Trading Agent Should Respond When Execution Is Unavailable guide.
Frequently asked questions
A timeout only indicates that a response was not received in time; it does not confirm whether the order was executed, rejected or never sent. Explicit status verification is required to determine the true outcome.
No. An emergency stop revokes the calling key and cancels managed activity where possible, but existing positions and token allowances remain until the owner reviews and acts on them.
Backtests are read‑only and do not interact with live accounts or venues, so they do not need runtime capability verification.
When a partial fill occurs, the agent should re‑evaluate its risk limits and market data before deciding whether to send additional orders.
Sources and verification
Product claims in this article were checked against these first-party references. Runtime status remains authoritative for current availability.
- Felix documentationfirst party
- Felix machine referencefirst party
- Felix runtime statuslive status
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