/pre-trade-discipline-gate

Pre-Trade Discipline Gate Framework

Purpose

The pre-trade discipline gate sits after thesis registration and before any manual broker order. It is designed to stop planless, oversized, revenge-risk, or upstream-blocked entries while leaving watchlist decisions recordable.

The skill is advisory and journal-focused. It does not automate execution.

Decision Model

Overall decisions are ranked:

1. GO
2. NO_ACTIONABLE_ORDERS
3. REVIEW_REQUIRED
4. NO_GO

NO_GO outranks REVIEW_REQUIRED so explicit rule violations are visible even when another candidate only needs review.

Actionable Intents

Manual-order gate applies to:

• ENTRY_READY
• ACTIONABLE
• ACTIONABLE_DAY1
• MANUAL_ORDER

The following intents are journaled but do not imply a broker order:

• WATCHLIST
• DELAYED_EP_WATCH
• PEAD_HANDOFF
• IGNORE
• REJECTED

If all candidates are non-actionable, the output is NO_ACTIONABLE_ORDERS.

Blocking Rules

An actionable candidate is NO_GO when:

• entry_in_written_plan is not true
• stop_predefined is not true
• size_within_plan is not true
• actual_risk_dollars is greater than planned_risk_dollars
• A losing exit or partial trim exists inside the revenge window
• Market-regime recommendation is REDUCE_ONLY or CASH_PRIORITY
• Circuit-breaker recommendation is COOLDOWN, HALTED, or TRADING_HALTED

Market-regime recommendation NEW_ENTRY_ALLOWED and circuit-breaker recommendation TRADING_ALLOWED are the only explicit pass values. Unknown or missing upstream artifacts produce REVIEW_REQUIRED for actionable orders.

Both planned_risk_dollars and actual_risk_dollars are required for an actionable candidate. Each field accepts a finite, non-negative number or numeric string, including zero. A missing value, boolean, non-numeric string, NaN, infinity, or negative value produces REVIEW_REQUIRED; the audit copy is normalized to JSON null. When both fields are valid and actual risk exceeds planned risk, the candidate is NO_GO. An explicit NO_GO rule remains higher priority than a simultaneous invalid-risk review.

Trader Memory Integration

Revenge-risk detection reads trader-memory-core thesis YAML files:

• status_history[].realized_pnl < 0 counts partial trims and terminal ledger events.
• Terminal theses with no ledger realized_pnl fall back to outcome.pnl_dollars < 0 when a terminal date can be inferred.
• Date-only producer timestamps expanded to YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00+00:00 are counted on the named ET date, matching the drawdown-circuit-breaker behavior.
• Events after --as-of are ignored.

When thesis_id and --state-dir are provided, the skill links the generated JSON report with trader-memory-core link_report. It never uses mark_reviewed, because pre-trade checklist logging must not advance monitoring review dates.

The JSON report and JSONL journal retain candidate-level checklist_answers for entry_in_written_plan, stop_predefined, size_within_plan, planned_risk_dollars, actual_risk_dollars, and notes. Invalid risk-dollar values are stored as JSON null. Valid JSON decimals that cannot round-trip through a binary float are retained as numeric strings, preserving their exact value for the decision and audit record. This keeps GO decisions reviewable later instead of recording only failures.

Workflow Integration

In swing-opportunity-daily, the gate runs after thesis registration and consumes same-workflow artifacts such as candidate_journal_entry, position_sizing, trade_plans, and circuit_breaker_decision.

In stockbee-ep-daily, the workflow first runs drawdown-circuit-breaker to produce circuit_breaker_decision, then runs this gate only for ACTIONABLE_DAY1 / ENTRY_READY manual-order candidates. Delayed EP, PEAD handoff, and ignored candidates are recorded as no-action orders.

exposure_decision remains a prerequisite workflow artifact. It should be supplied to the CLI by path; it is not listed under workflow consumes because strict workflow validation only permits artifacts produced earlier in the same workflow.