AlphaDesk — dense, fast market-research terminal & MCP integration platform

A dense, fast market-research terminal and integration platform. Readers connect their own market-data and news providers; AlphaDesk is the workspace that connects, checks and presents what those providers — and the public record at SEC EDGAR and the US Treasury — actually say. Questions are asked in the reader's own AI agent (Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, opencode), which reads the same records through 50 read-only agent tools (MCP).

AlphaDesk reads: quotes and charts, news, SEC filings, financial statements, ownership and insider activity, earnings and corporate calendars, options, crypto. It does not trade, route orders, hold positions, score ideas or write summaries.

Two ways to use it — the managed cloud or your own server. The code is open source under the GNU AGPL-3.0, with a commercial licence for anyone who cannot meet its terms. See Licence.

_{Figures in every screenshot are blurred on purpose: they came from a reader's own vendor keys, and vendors restrict public display of their data. The layout is the real thing.}

Chart — your own SVG engine, session bands, drawings	Earnings week — dated by the company's own release and its SEC filing
News — your feeds in one three-day window, searched by word or meaning	Options — chains by expiry, calls and puts either side of the price

Contents

1. What AlphaDesk is — and is not
2. Two ways to run it
3. Design principles
4. Features
5. Data sources
6. Search
7. Agent access (MCP)
8. Accounts, security and privacy
9. Architecture
10. Repository layout
11. Development
12. Configuration reference
13. Production deployment and operations
14. Testing and quality
15. Known limitations
16. History
17. Licence

What AlphaDesk is — and is not

It is offered free at present (payments are designed but switched off; see Accounts).

Two ways to run it

Option A — Managed cloud

1. Open the hosted terminal and sign in with GitHub — the account is created on first sign-in. (Google sign-in admits invited accounts only until Google approves the app.)
2. On the Account page, connect the market-data and news providers you already use (Alpaca, FMP, Finnhub, Polygon, CoinGecko, Tiingo, …). SEC EDGAR and the US Treasury need no key.
3. It is free during early access — there is no plan to choose and no card to enter. Paid plans ($19 a month or $190 a year, each after a 14-day trial) will be announced to account holders before they start; nobody is charged without subscribing.
4. Optional: connect your own agent from the Account page — a token for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or opencode, or add the server URL as a connector in Claude.ai or ChatGPT.

Option B — Self-hosted (AGPL-3.0)

You need a SEC User-Agent with real contact details (SEC blocks requests without one), Python 3.11+ or Docker, and — for anything beyond EDGAR and Treasury data — your own vendor keys.

1. Configure. Copy the template and fill in the two required values:

cp alphadesk/deploy/env.example .env

Generate the vault key with:

python -c "import os, base64; print(base64.b64encode(os.urandom(32)).decode())"

2a. Install from PyPI — the shortest route; the built interface ships with the package:

pip install alphadesk

python -m alphadesk.main dashboard

The terminal is at http://127.0.0.1:8000. The first start downloads the embedding model into the Hugging Face cache (skip it with ALPHADESK_SEMANTIC_SEARCH=off).

2b. Or run from a clone, which is what you want if you intend to change anything:

pip install -r requirements.txt
python -m alphadesk.main keys import-env
python -m alphadesk.main dashboard

2c. Or run with Docker. The image bakes the embedding model in, so a container downloads nothing at start:

docker build -t alphadesk .

docker run -d --name alphadesk -p 8000:8000 --env-file .env -e ALPHADESK_DATA=/data -v alphadesk-data:/data alphadesk

With ALPHADESK_AUTH left on and no sign-on provider configured, create a password account inside the container:

docker exec -it alphadesk python -m alphadesk.main user add you@example.com

3. Keep it private or publish your changes. Under the AGPL, if you let other people use a modified copy over a network, you must offer them the source of your version. Using it yourself, unmodified, or keeping your changes to yourself on your own machine carries no such obligation. Billing stays off (ALPHADESK_BILLING_ENFORCE is off by default), so every account on your instance has full access.

Design principles

These are the product. Much of what might look missing was built, measured and removed on purpose — DECISIONS.md says what and why. Bring evidence and open an issue.