Get set up

Prefer to watch? The setup guide video walks every step, 24 minutes, from the download to the first practice trade.

Prep and install, in under two minutes

The whole setup, start to finish. Worth watching before you begin — everything below is the same journey as a checklist you can tick off.

No sound needed — every step is captioned on screen.

The computer it runs on

Threepio runs entirely on your own hardware. Nothing is hosted by us and nothing phones home, so the machine needs to be able to carry it.

• A Windows PC that can stay powered on It must be awake and online while your strategies are trading.Required
• Sleep and hibernate turned off Settings → System → Power. A machine that sleeps mid-session drops the connection.Required
• Windows updates done in advance So Windows doesn't decide to restart during a trading session.Required
• Know that Windows will warn you — twice Threepio is new, so Windows has never seen it before and says so in strong language. Both warnings are expected and both are one click to pass. Exact wording and clicks in section 06.Required reading

If you're on a Mac — or don't want your PC on all day

Threepio is a Windows application. Mac users need a Windows machine to point it at, and the usual answer is a VPS: a Windows computer in a data centre that never sleeps.

• Mac users: a Windows VPS Not optional on macOS. Any Windows VPS provider works — the trading-focused ones are fine.Mac only
• PC users: decide PC or VPS A VPS is only needed if you'd rather not leave your own machine running.Optional
• VPS meets the specs in section 01 The cheapest tiers are usually 2 cores / 4 GB — under-spec. Size it properly.If VPS
• You can reach your VPS by Remote Desktop Test the login before launch day, not on it.If VPS
• VPS located near your broker Lower latency to the broker's servers. A nice-to-have, not a requirement.Optional

Your broker and trading platform

Threepio trades your account at your broker. The money and the account stay yours throughout — it connects to a platform you're already logged into. Set up whichever rows match the markets you intend to trade.

Futures — the one step people miss

• NinjaTrader 8 installed and logged in Free from ninjatrader.com. Prop accounts on Tradovate connect through NT8 too.Required
• Automated Trading Interface enabled in NT8 Tools → Settings → Automated trading interface → tick AT Interface → OK, then restart NinjaTrader. Without this tick (and the restart) the connection test fails.Required
• Market data subscription active in NT8 Your broker or prop firm's feed. Threepio trades what NT8 can see.Required
• The bar logger pasted into NinjaTrader and put on one chart per instrument Threepio's price data comes from NinjaTrader through a small indicator, JarvisBarLogger.cs, found in the NinjaTrader 8 folder inside your Threepio folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\MillenniumFalcon). In NT8: New → NinjaScript Editor → right-click → New Indicator, paste the whole file over the template, press F5. Then open a 1-minute chart for each instrument and add the JarvisBarLogger indicator to it: NQ, ES and YM for the Master Book, plus MNQ and MGC for the Machine Book. On each chart, right-click → Data Series → Days to load = 400. The ACCOUNT card in Threepio counts the sessions as they arrive.Required
• After every Threepio update: paste the logger again The indicator runs inside NinjaTrader, so an app update cannot touch it. When a release notes says the logger changed, paste the new JarvisBarLogger.cs over the old one in the NinjaScript Editor, press F5, then right-click each chart → Reload All Historical Data.Each update
• Run the ORB inside NinjaTrader — this is what trades Without this step nothing trades. The bar logger above gives you charts and a dashboard that looks connected; this is the part that actually places orders and the only part that asks RiskGate. The same folder holds ORBV19Multi_Threepio.cs: the three Master Book ORB legs as ONE NinjaTrader Strategy (not an indicator, so it appears under Strategies, not Indicators). Paste it like the logger (New Strategy this time), F5, then right-click one NQ 5-minute chart → Strategies → add it. One chart is enough — it pulls ES and YM in itself, and the micro twins too. Set the front-month names for NQ, ES and YM in its inputs, leave "Ask Threepio's RiskGate" ON, choose the account it trades (Sim101 to practise) and tick Enabled, then OK — adding it to the chart does not start it, the tick does. Set Account balance and Current loss limit to your own numbers: the loss limit is the account VALUE where you would be breached, not the drawdown amount, so a 50,000 account allowed to lose 2,000 is 50000 and 48000. Left on the shipped defaults it sizes against an account that is not yours. It only places an order after Threepio says yes, so Threepio must be running; Strategy Analyzer backtests never ask.Required

Forex, stocks and crypto

• MetaTrader 5 installed and logged in Log into MT5 first, then connect Threepio to it.If forex
• Stocks and ETFs — nothing to prepare, and nothing to buy There is no live order route for equities yet, so please don't purchase charting software for it. Details in the note below.If stocks
• Exchange API key with trade permission ONLY Never enable withdrawal permission on a key you give to any software, including this one.If crypto

Funding and risk settings

You set the risk limits once, on first run, and RiskGate sizes every position to them automatically. Decide these numbers before you're sitting in front of the wizard.

• A funded, evaluation or demo account Start on demo or evaluation. There is no rush to put real money behind it.Required
• Your account size written down The number every position size is derived from.Required
• Your daily loss cap decided For a prop account, match the firm's rule exactly. Otherwise pick what you can genuinely stomach.Required
• Your max drawdown as an AMOUNT, not a floor The amount you may lose, not the balance you must not fall below. On a 150,000 account with a 145,500 floor, that is 4,500. NinjaTrader's "Current loss limit" field asks for the opposite — the floor — so it is easy to carry the wrong number across.Required
• Your maximum position size decided A hard ceiling, regardless of what the sizing maths asks for.Required
• Which markets you actually want traded You don't have to enable all of them. Start narrow.Recommended

Your licence and the delivery email

• Know which email address you bought with Your download link and licence key go to that address, and only that address.Required
• Check your spam folder on the day A first email from a new domain with a download link is a classic false positive.Required
• Telegram installed for trade alerts Optional. Connects in settings and pushes fills and daily summaries to your phone.Optional
• Somewhere to back up the data folder That folder plus your licence key is a complete recovery on a new PC.Recommended

What launch day actually looks like

In order, from the email landing to the machine running. The setup wizard walks you through every screen — this is just so you know the shape of it in advance.

• 1 — Download and run the installer From the link in your delivery email. Expect the two warnings above.
• 2 — Start Threepio It opens in its own window — no browser tab, no address bar. Everything runs on your machine.
• 3 — Paste your licence key No spaces, no line breaks. Press activate.
• 4 — Complete the guided tour It runs automatically and walks every screen. It has to be completed before full access opens.
• 5 — Pick your colourway Four themes. Purely cosmetic, and changeable later.
• 6 — Connect your account Choose your platform and press Test Connection. Green means ready. Futures: the setup wizard asks for your NinjaTrader account name (Sim101 to practise), your risk per trade in money, and walks the NinjaTrader steps from section 03 — AT Interface ticked and NT8 restarted, the bar logger on its charts.
• 7 — Enter your risk limits The numbers from section 04. Sizing follows automatically.
• 7b — Updates Threepio checks once a day and shows an update button; SETTINGS → CHECK NOW asks straight away. Run the new installer over the top — no uninstall. If the page afterwards looks like the old version, shows "failed to fetch" errors, or the tutorial says it is one card short, press Ctrl+F5 inside the window once.
• 8 — Leave live trading OFF and watch it It ships disabled. Arm it yourself, in your own time, when you've seen it work.

Checking the file is the real one

Entirely optional, and most people won't bother. But since Windows will tell you the installer is unrecognised, here is how to satisfy yourself independently rather than taking our word for it.

Every published build has a SHA-256 checksum — a fingerprint that changes completely if even one byte of the file differs. This is the checksum for the build linked in your delivery email:

To check it yourself, open PowerShell in your Downloads folder and run: