Documentation

Astral User Guide

A practical guide to using Astral's terminal, strategy workflows, dashboards, alerts, and sharing tools. This page is written from the actual app behavior so you can map it directly to what you see on screen.

What Astral Is

Astral is an AI-assisted trading workstation built around a chat-driven terminal. You use natural language to build and refine strategies, inspect charts, run backtests, save strategies, deploy them for alerts, and manage everything from a dashboard and shared library.

Primary Use Case
Create strategy ideas in chat, inspect generated code/backtest output, then iterate quickly without manually wiring every rule.
Secondary Use Cases
Track watchlists and alerts, explore community strategies/indicators, and review account/broker data from the dashboard.

Important Status Notes

The terminal is desktop-only in the current app. On mobile, users are shown a "Please use a desktop" gate. Also, strategy deployment supports alert workflows today and exposes a connected mode UI that may depend on your account rollout and backend support.

Terminal Workspace (Desktop)

The terminal is a three-column workstation: left chat sidebar, central chart/workspace, and a slim right rail with app actions plus an optional watchlist drawer.

Left Sidebar: Chat, History, Build Feedback
  • Chat with Astral to build or modify strategies.
  • Start a new chat with Alt + N.
  • Open chat history (on demand) to load prior sessions.
  • Sidebar can be resized and collapsed/expanded with Ctrl/Cmd + C.
  • Assistant responses may show reasoning/build steps and structured outputs while streaming.
Main Content: Charts + Code/Backtest Panel
  • Multi-chart grid for one or more symbols/timeframes.
  • Bottom panel with Code and Backtest tab states.
  • Panel supports minimize and maximize/full-screen style controls.
  • Alerts modal can be opened for manual price/volume alert creation on displayed symbols.
Right Rail + Watchlist
  • Dashboard (`Alt + D`), Explore (`Alt + E`), Watchlist (`Alt + W`), Alerts (button).
  • Watchlist opens as a resizable side panel.
  • Clicking watchlist rows can replace the current chart symbol set.

Strategy Workflow (Build, Review, Save, Deploy)

1) Build In Chat

The fastest way to get good results is to be explicit: tell Astral the asset(s), timeframe, entry condition, exit condition, and risk rules. You can also ask it to revise an existing strategy rather than starting over.

Good Prompt Pattern
"Build a strategy for SPY on 15m. Enter when [condition]. Exit when [condition]. Add a stop loss and a take profit. Show me the backtest."
Refinement Pattern
"Keep the same strategy but reduce overtrading," "change timeframe to 1h," "add a volume filter," or "tighten stop loss."

2) Review Code and Backtest

Astral can generate code and backtest outputs into the main panel. Use the code view to sanity-check strategy logic and the backtest view to decide whether a strategy is worth saving or deploying.

  • Check return, drawdown, win rate, and trade count together (not in isolation).
  • Look for suspiciously low trade counts or unrealistic performance spikes.
  • If results look wrong, ask Astral to explain the current logic before changing it.

3) Save and Reopen

Saved strategies are surfaced in the strategies flows (modal/dashboard widgets). You can reopen strategy details, inspect metrics, and run another backtest from detail views.

4) Deploy For Alerts

Deployment is how you operationalize a strategy. In current app behavior, deployment always requires a notification profile, and alert-driven monitoring is the default safe path for most users.

Deployment Modes in the UI

The deploy modal exposes an alert-only mode and a connected mode (with broker/account/cash allocation fields). Connected execution availability may depend on your backend/account rollout. If you are unsure, use alert-only.

Charts & Analysis

Astral's charting is built on TradingView Lightweight Charts (attribution requirement applies). The chart workspace supports multiple chart types, broad interval coverage, drawing tools, indicators, and hotkeys for fast layout changes.

Chart Types

Candlestick
Line
Area
Bar
Baseline
Histogram

Date Ranges (quick presets)

1D
5D
1M
3M
6M
YTD
1Y
5Y
ALL
CUSTOM

Intervals (supported in UI)

GroupSupported Intervals
Common
1m5m15m30m1h1D
Minutes
1m5m15m30m
Hours
1h
Days
1D

Indicators and Drawings

  • Open the indicators flow with I.
  • Drawing tools include trend line (Alt + T), horizontal line (Alt + H), and rectangle (Alt + B) via hotkeys.
  • Use chart hotkeys to add/replace/remove charts without leaving the keyboard.

Alerts & Notifications

Astral has two alert systems users commonly confuse: manual chart alerts (created from the terminal alerts modal) and strategy deployment notifications (from deployed strategies).

Manual Chart Alerts
  • Create alerts on currently displayed symbols.
  • Condition types include price and volume.
  • Operators include crossing, crossing up/down, greater/less than, moving %, and channel-style conditions.
  • Triggers include once/every time variants and bar/minute options.
  • Expiration is required.
Strategy Notifications
  • Triggered when a deployed strategy fires a signal.
  • Routed through a notification profile.
  • Recent alerts appear in the right-rail Alerts menu.
  • The Alerts menu supports clearing/marking all as read.

Notification Profiles (used in strategy deployment)

Notification profiles can include email, SMS, app push, and web push channel settings. The edit strategy flow also supports inline profile creation, including phone verification for SMS-enabled profiles.

Saved & Deployed Strategies

Strategy management appears in multiple places: the Strategies modal (hotkey Alt + S), dashboard widgets, and detail popups/modals. Use these views to compare performance, redeploy, edit notification routing, and inspect details.

Saved Strategies
  • Review metrics previews (return, sharpe, drawdown, win rate, trades).
  • Open detail views for deeper metrics and timestamps.
  • Deploy, delete, copy/edit, or re-run backtests depending on context.
Deployed Strategies
  • Track live/deployed status and associated notification profiles.
  • Edit deployment settings and notification routing.
  • Undeploy without deleting the underlying saved strategy.

Practical Recommendation

Treat deployment as a monitoring step, not proof of strategy quality. Validate the strategy first in backtest and review how often signals are expected to fire.

Dashboard

The dashboard is a configurable monitoring surface with widgets. It is designed for daily review and operational work: strategy status, alerts, connected brokers, positions, and quick chart checks.

Dashboard Widget Examples

Useful Dashboard Behaviors

  • Widget layout can be edited/reordered.
  • You can add chart widgets with symbol search (keyboard shortcut support includes Shift + T in dashboard chart workflows).
  • Strategy detail popups support richer analytics and share/publish related actions in some contexts.

Explore & Sharing

Explore is the discovery and reuse layer for Astral. It has three tabs: strategies, indicators, and saved (your saved library).

Strategies Tab
  • Sort by Popular, Recent, ROI, Drawdown, Win Rate, or Trades.
  • Open a strategy card to inspect it.
  • Save a strategy to your own library.
  • Use the share button to copy a public link (/strategy/{slug})
Indicators Tab
  • Browse expression-based indicators with visual previews.
  • Copy indicators into your library.
  • Open indicators via shared links (/indicator/{slug}) into the terminal.
Saved Tab
View and search your saved strategies and saved indicators in one place. This is your reusable working set for future terminal sessions.
Search & Sorting
Each tab has its own search context and recent-search history. Use this to quickly revisit topics or filter large lists.

What happens when you open a shared link?

Shared strategy and indicator routes redirect into the terminal using query parameters. The terminal then handles the import/apply flow and transitions you into a normal session route.

Brokerage & Account Management

Astral includes broker connection and account views (SnapTrade-based UI flows). This supports monitoring and account-level visibility, and can be used alongside strategy and alert workflows.

Broker Connections Widget
  • Connect a brokerage account from the dashboard widget.
  • Review connected broker cards and expand to see accounts.
  • Disconnect brokers if needed.
  • Account enable/disable preferences are stored locally in the browser.
Account Details Pages
  • Portfolio overview cards (total value, cash, buying power, unrealized P&L).
  • Tabs for Positions, Orders, and Activity.
  • Order filtering and status labels.

Execution Caveat

Broker connectivity in the dashboard does not automatically mean every strategy deployment is executing trades. Use the deployment mode shown in the strategy deploy flow and confirm your setup before assuming automation.

Auth, Plans & Billing

Sign In / Sign Up

  • Sign-in page supports sign in, sign up, forgot password, and password reset flows.
  • Astral also supports referral/tier-selection flows as part of onboarding/authorization.
  • After successful auth, Astral routes you back to the requested page (for example the terminal).

Checkout

  • /checkout initializes Stripe subscription checkout.
  • Success page confirms payment, then redirects to the terminal.
  • Cancel page confirms no charge and offers retry/basic continuation paths.

If checkout fails

Use the "Back to plan selection" path and try again. The app surfaces checkout initialization errors directly on the checkout page.

Shortcuts

App / Terminal Shortcuts

KeysAction
Ctrl/Cmd + CCollapse / expand the left chat sidebar
Alt + NStart a new chat session
Alt + WToggle watchlist panel
Alt + SOpen Strategies modal (icon is hidden on the rail)
Alt + DOpen Dashboard
Alt + EOpen Explore
IOpen indicators modal

Chart Shortcuts

KeysAction
RReset chart view
Shift + RReplace active chart symbol
Shift + TAdd a new chart
Shift + XRemove active chart (won't remove last chart)
Alt + TActivate trend line drawing tool
Alt + HActivate horizontal line drawing tool
Alt + BActivate rectangle drawing tool
HHide all drawings
Alt + IRemove indicators
Ctrl/Cmd + ZUndo
Ctrl/Cmd + YRedo

Troubleshooting

I open the terminal on my phone and can't use it
That is expected in the current app. The terminal is desktop-only right now. Use a desktop/laptop browser.
Alt+S does nothing (or I can't find Strategies)
Click into the terminal page first so it has keyboard focus. The visible right rail hides the strategies icon, but the strategies modal is still available by hotkey.
I deployed a strategy but I'm not seeing alerts
Verify the strategy is listed as deployed, confirm your notification profile/channel settings, and confirm the strategy has actually hit a trigger condition in the current market.
Broker is connected but strategy isn't executing trades
Check the deployment mode used for that strategy. Broker connectivity and strategy auto-execution are related but not identical features.
Shared strategy/indicator link didn't import
Make sure you're signed in before opening the shared link. Shared routes redirect into the terminal import flow, which requires an authenticated session to complete.