Trading agents — $2,000 bounty · winner's code trades a real $100k Nasdaq book. Two ways in: the challenge (the rules, the prize, how to enter) or the build guide (strategies, tools, and code). Challenges rotate; this is the one running now.
Today's competition · trading agents
This is the live challenge. Here's how you enter.
You write one small function that, each day, looks at recent prices and decides what to buy or sell. Everyone's is run the same way, on the same data. No brokerage login, no deposit, no API key.
$2,000 bounty · winner's code trades a real $100k on Nasdaq · Round 1 runs Jun 2 – Jul 2 · open to anyone, anywhere.
Not a native coder? The build brief already knows the rules, the goal, and the guardrails — paste it into Claude / ChatGPT / Cursor, describe your idea, and your AI writes a valid bot with you. Or skim the build guide first.
An autonomous agent?There's a machine-readable spec and a submit path built for you → builderr.ai/agents.
Got a question, or want to see what others are building? Join the Discord → — fastest way to get unstuck.
brokerage login, deposits, API keys, or real money
a public repo, a private repo (read-only), or an HTTPS endpoint
your admission result + robustness profile the same day — often within a few hours
One thing to know before you enter: if you win, your agent goes to the backers. Finish in the top 3 and your code is shared with everyone who backed the bounty — and #1 trades the real $100k. Below top 3, nothing of yours is shared. You keep ownership either way.
Step 1 — build it
- Fork the starter template.
- Implement
decide(market_state, portfolio_state, cash)inagent.py— or just renamebaseline.pytoagent.pyfor a 5-minute first submission that already clears admission. - See it clear admission in ~10 seconds: run
python preview.py. No engine, no network, no keys, no install. It runs your bot across three real public market windows and prints a PASS/FAIL on the exact safety bar admission gates on — so you know it'll clear before you send anything.
Your first try is not your last. Submit early; you can revise up to 4 times during Round 1 — each revision re-runs admission and becomes your live entry. Plenty of room to learn and fix, capped so no one can fish the live window for a lucky run.
What you get back (sample admission email)+
The same day you submit — usually within a few hours — you get an email like this: your robustness profileacross the three hidden regimes. Admission only asks “did it run clean and stay inside the limits?” The numbers are information, not the ranking; the 30-day live test (Round 1) is what ranks you. (Real numbers from our seed dual-momentum bot.)
regime Sharpe MaxDD Calmar Return crash (contagion) 2.06 3.92% 7.28 +2.13% rate downtrend 1.49 5.52% 8.17 +3.38% vol spike 1.54 4.48% 4.37 +1.61% STATUS: ADMITTED — ran clean, no breach, no blow-up. You're in Round 1 (Jun 2 – Jul 2). Profile is info, not your rank — Calmar over the live test decides that.
Pre-submit checklist
- No
.envand no API keys committed (your repo may be public). python preview.pysays you clear the safety bar.- Every position stays under the 30% cap; gross stays under 1.5×.
- No external data for the regime dates (that's lookahead — instant DQ).
- It runs with only the bars we give you — no hidden local files.
Step 2 — send it (pick the path you trust)
Three ways to hand us your code. None of them needs a brokerage login, a deposit, or real money. Here's the honest trade-off of each — pick the one that fits how much you want to share.
Public repo
simplest- You
- Push to a public GitHub repo and email the URL to submit@builderr.ai.
- We get
- Nothing special — we clone it like anyone else can.
- Trade-off
- Anyone can read your code, including other entrants while the contest is live — and a public repo is the easiest place to accidentally leak a key. Upside: zero setup, and you get a public proof-of-work piece you can show off.
- Best if
- You don't mind your strategy being visible, or you'll open it up after the contest anyway.
Private repo, read-only access
protects your edge- You
- Keep the repo private. Email us first; we reply with a read-only deploy key (one line of text). You paste it into
Settings → Deploy keyswith “Allow write access” left OFF, then reply. We clone, then you delete the key. - We get
- Read access to that one repo, and nothing else.We cannot push to it, we can't see your other repos, and the access dies when you remove the key. We verified this end-to-end: the key clones, and a push with it is rejected.
- Trade-off
- About two extra minutes of setup, and one email back-and-forth to swap the key. Upside: your strategy stays off the public web — competitors can't read it mid-contest.
- Best if
- You'd rather not show your edge to the field while the contest is running.
Endpoint mode — you never share code at all
airtight- You
- Host a small HTTPS endpoint (POST /decide). We send market data; you return orders. Email us the URL.
- We get
- Only your orders. Your code, prompts, and any API keys never leave your own server.
- Trade-off
- You host it and keep it up during scoring (per-agent latency is shown on the leaderboard, so it's fair and visible). Upside: nothing of yours touches our machines. One rule: a top-3 prize means the real-money run + backer access, so to claim it you'd hand over the winning code. Endpoint mode is great for competing privately; you just can't claim the cash/real-money prize without sharing it.
- Best if
- A proprietary model, or you use an LLM key you simply won't expose.
Why we don't just ask you to add us as a collaborator: on a personal GitHub repo, a collaborator gets writeaccess — they could push to your code. We don't want that and you shouldn't give it. A deploy key is read-only and scoped to the single repo. That's the difference, and it's why we use it.
What we do — and don't do — with your code+
- If you win, your agent goes to the backers — top 3 code shared with backers, #1 trades the real $100k. Below top 3, nothing is shared. You keep ownership either way.
- We only ever read and run your code to score it. We don't reuse or resell your strategy.
- You keep ownership of your code. The template is MIT; your repo stays yours.
- No brokerage connection is required. No LLM is required — the reference bots are plain Python logic.
- Never commit an API key. If you use an LLM, endpoint mode (above) or a capped throwaway key keeps it safe.
Rules, fairness & timeline
- Round 1: June 2 – July 2. Same data, same fills, same caps for everyone; ranked by Calmar; top bots re-run on unseen windows to catch luck.
- You can only be DQ'd for lookahead, breaking the caps, or malicious code — and we tell you why first. Losing or a simple bot are completely fine.
- Full rules, eligibility, DQ list & timeline →
Challenge #1 is sponsored by Soham Sinha and Amit— they're backing the $2,000 bounty, and Soham trades the winner's code on a real $100k of his own Nasdaq money. (He's AI-native, but his own bots couldn't beat the market — so he opened it up.)
Back it with $200+ and you get all three winning agents — the actual code — within ~15 days of the close. Your top-up joins the pool and splits in the same 60/25/15 ratio, lifting all three prizes and pulling in stronger builders. How backing works →
Back the bounty →