# AirbagMCP: Risk Gate and Point-in-Time Clock for AI Trading Agents on IBKR

> A Rust Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Interactive Brokers (IBKR). It checks orders from AI agents against hard risk limits. Status: early access for IBKR paper accounts. Support for live accounts is planned.

## Status

- No real order has been sent through the Rust path yet. It is built and tested for IBKR paper accounts.
- Ships as a single Rust binary. Run `airbag mcp` to start the MCP server over stdio.
- Tested on Linux only.
- The server offers tools. It offers no MCP resources.
- License: MIT.
- Not an investment adviser. Nothing here is financial or investment advice.

## What it does

- Risk gate:
  - Rejects market (MKT) orders and requires a limit price.
  - Routes approved limit orders through IBKR Adaptive (Normal).
  - Refuses a repeated `client_order_key` using a SQLite ledger. The MCP layer also checks the broker for that order ref.
  - Applies a daily loss lock, a total drawdown kill switch and an orders-per-minute rate limit.
  - Applies a spread limit and a price collar (fat finger check).
  - Applies single-name, sector and average-daily-volume caps.
  - Rejects orders with high commission drag. The commission and margin figure is a local estimate. It does not reject for margin.
- Point-in-time clock: queries return an event only if `accepted_at <= sim_clock`.
- Ticker masking: symbols become tokens that rotate daily. Masking does not prove that a model cannot recognise an asset.
- Stream coalescer: absorbs ticks locally at zero tokens, tracks VWAP, volatility and spread, and wakes the agent on anomalies. The token saving is not measured.
- Friction accounting: commission and spread costs.
- Local SEC ingest: 8-K filings, MD&A tone and XBRL facts for 2,396 filers.

## MCP tools (9)

1. `set_sim_clock`: set the simulated clock for historical replay.
2. `query_pit_events`: query point-in-time events.
3. `ingest_stream_tick`: send a tick to the stream coalescer.
4. `get_stream_digest`: read the coalescer digest.
5. `stage_airbag_limit_order`: submit an order to the risk gate.
6. `get_conviction_candidates`: list conviction candidates.
7. `get_risk_and_friction_status`: read risk limits state and friction costs.
8. `get_ibkr_paper_account`: read the IBKR paper account.
9. `flatten_all_positions`: close all open positions.

## Test results

We tested five of our own strategy families (11,364 backtests in total) with combinatorial purged cross-validation, probability of backtest overfitting, deflated Sharpe and a permuted-signal placebo. 0 of 5 pass. Median out-of-sample excess over SPY was negative for all five. Limits: the local data cache has survivorship bias, prices exclude dividends, and the look-ahead tests cover symbols in the local cache and sample cut days. These are simulated results and do not predict future results.

## Pricing (planned, no payment taken today)

- Developer Execution Sidecar: $79/mo. The local risk gate exists. Live support is planned.
- Hosted PIT SEC Catalyst Feed: $39/mo. Entirely planned.
- Complete Quant Desk: $99/mo. Local part exists. Hosted part is planned.

## Setup

- Command: `airbag`
- Arguments: `["mcp"]`
- Transport: stdio
- A `docker-compose.yml` in the repository runs a local paper IB Gateway only.