Connect TraderDaddy Pro to your AI assistant

First, what is this?

MCP is a standard plug that lets an AI app — Claude, Cursor — read data from somewhere else. Plugging TraderDaddy Pro into it means you stop copying numbers off our website and start just asking: "what's the unusual options flow on NVDA today?", "is IV rank rich enough to sell puts on SOFI?" — and the answer comes back from our live data, in your own chat.

You are not writing code. You are copying one block of text into one settings file, once. Ten minutes, most of which is finding the file.

Two more things worth knowing before you start:

• It is read-only. Nothing you connect can place a trade, move money, or change your account. It reads market data and that is all it can do.
• You can try it for free first, with no key and no card. Skip to Try it free before you pay for anything at the bottom if you want to see what this feels like before committing.

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Step 1 — Get your key

Everything below needs a key. It is a long string that starts with td_live_ and it is the thing that says "this is my account" when your AI app calls us.

1. Go to traderdaddy.pro in a normal web browser and sign in.
2. Click your avatar in the top-right, then Settings.
3. Along the top of Settings, click the Developer tab. (Direct link: traderdaddy.pro/settings?tab=developer.)
4. If you do not have API access yet, this tab is where you buy it. The Developer API is a separate add-on, not part of a trading plan — it is $29.99/month while you also hold a TraderDaddy Pro subscription, or $49.99/month on its own. You do not need any particular trading tier; even a free account can buy it directly. The MCP server is included, with nothing extra to buy.
5. Once access is active, click Generate API Key. Give it a name you will recognise later — "my laptop" is fine.
6. Copy the key immediately. It is shown once and never again. Paste it into a password manager, or a note only you can read. If you lose it, you do not recover it — you generate a new one and delete the old.

You can hold up to five keys at a time and delete any of them whenever you want. A deleted key stops working within about 15 seconds.

Never paste your key into Discord, a screenshot, a support ticket or a YouTube comment. Treat it exactly like a password. Anyone holding it can use your account's data allowance and eat the request limit you are paying for. Nobody from TraderDaddy Pro will ever ask you for it — we cannot read it back ourselves, only you have it. If you think it has leaked, delete it on the Developer tab and generate a new one.

A real key looks like td_live_ followed by a long run of random letters and numbers. Everywhere below you will see td_live_your_key_here — that is a placeholder. Replace the whole thing, including the td_live_ part, with the key you just copied.

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Step 2 — Put it into your app

Find your app below and follow only that list. The apps keep their settings in different places, which is the single biggest reason people get stuck.

If you use Claude Code (the terminal one) — easiest by far

One command. No file to find, no punctuation to get right.

claude mcp add --transport http traderdaddy \
  https://api.traderdaddy.pro/api/v1/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer td_live_your_key_here"

1. Open your terminal.
2. Paste the command above, having swapped td_live_your_key_here for your key.
3. Press Enter.
4. Start claude and ask it for market data.

If you have Claude Code, use this path even if you also have the desktop app — it is the one with the fewest ways to go wrong.

If you use the Claude desktop app

Claude Desktop cannot dial a web address directly, so it goes through a small helper called mcp-remote. That helper needs Node.js on your computer — if you do not have it, install it first from nodejs.org (take the big green "LTS" button, accept every default).

1. Open Claude Desktop.
2. Settings → Developer → Edit Config. That opens the folder containing a file called claude_desktop_config.json.
   • On a Mac it lives at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
   • On Windows it lives at %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
3. Open that file in any plain text editor — TextEdit, Notepad, VS Code. Not Word.
4. If the file is empty, paste the whole block below. If it already has "mcpServers" in it with other entries, add just the "traderdaddy-pro" part inside the existing mcpServers braces, and put a comma between entries.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "traderdaddy-pro": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y", "mcp-remote",
        "https://api.traderdaddy.pro/api/v1/mcp",
        "--header", "Authorization: Bearer td_live_your_key_here"
      ]
    }
  }
}

5. Replace td_live_your_key_here with your key. Keep the quotation marks and keep the word Bearer and the space after it.
6. Save the file.
7. Quit Claude Desktop completely and reopen it. Closing the window is not enough — on a Mac use Cmd-Q, on Windows quit it from the system tray. It only reads that file at startup.

If you use Cursor

1. Open Cursor.
2. Find or create the file mcp.json in a folder called .cursor in your home directory:
   • Mac and Linux: ~/.cursor/mcp.json
   • Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.cursor\mcp.json The leading dot means the folder is hidden — on a Mac press Cmd-Shift-. in Finder to reveal it.
3. Paste this in, same merging rule as above if the file already has entries:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "traderdaddy-pro": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://api.traderdaddy.pro/api/v1/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer td_live_your_key_here" }
    }
  }
}

4. Replace td_live_your_key_here with your key, save, and restart Cursor.

If you use Claude on your phone, or claude.ai in a browser

There is no config file on a phone, so this one works differently: instead of storing your key in a file, you paste it once on our own page and Claude remembers the connection.

1. In the Claude app or on claude.ai: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector.
2. For the URL, enter https://api.traderdaddy.pro/api/v1/mcp
3. Tap Connect. Claude sends you to a TraderDaddy Pro page headed "Connect TraderDaddy Pro".
4. Paste your td_live_ key into the box on that page and press Authorize. The key goes to us, never to the app.
5. You land back in Claude with the connection live.

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The one mistake that breaks everything

🔴 If your app takes a plain web address, that entry must also say "type": "http".

Write this and it will not work:

{ "traderdaddy-pro": { "url": "https://api.traderdaddy.pro/api/v1/mcp" } }

Claude Desktop and Claude Code read an entry with no type as a program to run on your computer, not a website to call. There is no program, so the connection silently fails — usually with no error at all, just a server that never appears. Cursor is more forgiving and will accept a bare url, which is exactly why a config copied from a friend on Cursor can look identical to yours and still not work.

The Cursor block above already has "type": "http" in it. The Claude Desktop block avoids the problem a different way, by going through mcp-remote. Use the blocks on this page as written and you will not hit this.

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Step 3 — How to tell it worked

Claude Desktop: after a full restart, a tools or plug icon appears near the message box. Click it and you should see traderdaddy-pro listed with a set of tools underneath.

Claude Code: run claude mcp list — traderdaddy should be in the output.

Cursor: Settings → MCP. The TraderDaddy Pro server should be listed and showing as connected. (Exactly how Cursor marks that has changed between versions — a dot, a badge, a tool count. As long as it is listed and not showing an error, move on to the test below, which is the real check.)

Claude phone / web: Settings → Connectors. TraderDaddy Pro appears in your connectors list.

Then ask it something. Copy this in exactly:

Using TraderDaddy, show me today's unusual options activity with a score above 85.

A working connection asks your permission to run a tool, thinks for a second, and comes back with real tickers, strikes and premium figures. If it instead describes what it would do, or talks about not having access to live data, it is not connected — go to the next section.

Starting the question with "Using TraderDaddy" is a habit worth keeping. It tells the assistant to reach for our data instead of answering from memory.

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If something went wrong

It says it is connected but there are no tools. Nearly always the "type": "http" problem above, or an entry pasted into the wrong place in the file. Delete your entry, paste the block from this page again unedited except for the key, save, and fully restart the app.

It says 401, or "unauthorized". The key is missing, mistyped, or the word Bearer and its space were dropped. It must read Authorization: Bearer td_live_... — one space after Bearer. Check you copied the key whole; keys are long and it is easy to miss the end.

It says 403, or "API access not active". The key is real but the subscription behind it is not active. Open Settings → Developer and check the Developer API subscription is live. This is also what you see if you generated a key, then cancelled the add-on.

It says 429, or "rate limit". You are going too fast. Every key gets 30 requests per minute, shared across everything using it. Wait a minute. If your assistant does this constantly, it is asking for too many tickers at once — ask about fewer names per message.

"Which tier do I need?" None in particular. The Developer API does not sit behind a trading tier — it is its own subscription, and a free account can buy it. Holding a TraderDaddy Pro subscription only changes the price ($29.99 instead of $49.99).

Claude Desktop shows an npx or "command not found" error. Node.js is not installed, or was installed after Claude was last started. Install it from nodejs.org, then fully quit and reopen Claude Desktop.

Nothing above fits. Contact support with the app you are using and what you see on screen. Do not include your key — we do not need it and cannot use it.

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Try it free before you pay for anything

If you want to see what an AI plugged into market data actually feels like before you buy a key, there is a free version with no key and no account: our pre-market gap scanner, on its own endpoint.

In Cursor, or in Claude Desktop via the same mcp-remote pattern, point a server at https://api.traderdaddy.pro/api/mcp/free:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "traderdaddy-free": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://api.traderdaddy.pro/api/mcp/free"
    }
  }
}

On the Claude phone or web app, add a custom connector pointing at https://api.traderdaddy.pro/api/mcp/free/connect and tap Connect free — no key, no login.

Then ask "what's gapping?". It is one tool rather than the full set, and it only has data during pre-market (4:00–9:30am ET) and after hours (4:00–8:00pm ET) — but it is the same connection, the same plug, and the same five minutes of setup. If you can make the free one work, the paid one is the identical process with a key added.

There is more about that scanner on the pre-market gappers page.