Get Started with CoTrading in 5 Minutes

This guide takes you from zero to your first AI-drafted trade plan on testnet — no real money involved. Budget about five minutes.

1. Download and install

CoTrading is a desktop app (Electron). Download the build for your operating system from cotrading.io and install it like any normal application. Everything runs locally on your machine; there is no account required just to explore.

2. Add an AI model key

CoTrading uses a bring-your-own-key model. In Settings, paste an API key for the AI model you want to use. The software itself is free and fully featured with your own key. (Subscriptions only buy the convenience of CoTrading-hosted model credits — they do not unlock features.)

3. Connect a testnet exchange

Start on testnet, always. Create testnet API credentials on your exchange and add them in CoTrading. Testnet keys live in a separate slot from live keys, so there is no way to confuse the two. This lets you practice the entire workflow with play money and zero risk.

4. Open the Markets workbench

Pick a symbol and open the chart. You get candlesticks plus technical indicators — BOLL, MACD, KDJ, and Fibonacci retracement. On the side panel, the AI chat reads the same chart context you are looking at, so you can ask questions like "what's the structure here?" and get analysis grounded in the visible data.

5. Ask for a trade plan and review the card

When you ask the AI for a setup, it returns a trade plan card:

• Direction — long or short
• Entry — the proposed entry price or zone
• Stop-loss — where the idea is invalidated
• Position size — sized against your risk settings
• Rationale — why the AI thinks this setup makes sense

Read every field. The AI has no permission to place orders — this card is a proposal, nothing more.

6. Approve or reject

If the plan makes sense to you, click approve and the order is sent (to testnet, in this case). If anything looks off, reject it. Before any order goes through, CoTrading's deterministic risk controls — daily-loss circuit breaker, consecutive-loss cooldown, position caps — check the trade locally, outside the AI.

What's next

Once you are comfortable on testnet, read our guide on safely switching to live trading. Going live requires passing multiple confirmation gates and a check that your API key has withdrawals disabled — deliberately, so live trading is a decision you make, never a default you drift into.