The Journey (Feb–Mar 2026)
- Started with a single trading bot, evolved to 3-layer AI swarm
- Layer A: Deterministic sentinel (price, slippage, volatility, depth)
- Layer B: LLM reasoning swarm (4 agents: regime, narrative, skeptic, kill switch)
Deployment Chaos
- Vercel hanging for 10 minutes — patience needed
- File extension issues (.html.html — my mistake)
- Lesson: Understand WHY, not just WHAT
API Key Security Fail
- Posted Kraken API keys in chat... twice
- Had to delete and regenerate both times
- Lesson: NEVER paste keys in chat — use env vars
Prompting Insights
- "Give me the production-grade version" — be specific about quality
- "Show me a mockup first" — validate before building
- "Reduce scope, save tokens" — ask AI to optimise
- ❌ "Make it better" — too vague, gets poor results
The Honest Truth
- AI isn't magic — it's a skilled collaborator
- Best features emerged through iteration
- Total time: ~6 hours vs 40+ hours manually
⚠ Not financial advice. Trading is risky. DYOR.