VegaGuard: Auditable AI Options Agent

VegaGuard is an autonomous, paper-only options trading and research agent built for the Alpaca AI Trading Agents Hackathon. It continuously scans SPY, QQQ, and IWM using daily and intraday trends, volume confirmation, volatility state, market alignment, implied volatility, and live option-chain data. When a directional opportunity qualifies, VegaGuard constructs a one-contract defined-risk debit spread and validates its expiration, liquidity, quote freshness, buying-power requirement, maximum loss, and exact two-leg structure. Orders are routed through the Alpaca MCP server rather than a hidden direct-execution path. Paper execution remains protected by configuration locks, an expiring plan ID, exact-plan approval, fresh quote revalidation, duplicate-order protection, and an emergency stop. VegaGuard separates production decisions, controlled exploration, and rejected shadow candidates. The shadow-evaluation pipeline records hypothetical 15, 30, and 60-minute outcomes using conservative ask-to-enter and bid-to-exit pricing without presenting simulated results as real profit. Its live dashboard uses Server-Sent Events to display scheduler, trade-monitor, position-guardian, risk-decision, order and lifecycle activity. The system completed one provider-backed IWM bear-put debit-spread lifecycle on Alpaca Paper Trading. It entered at a $2.62 debit and exited at a $2.64 credit, producing $2.00 gross realized P&L before fees. Alpaca did not report the applicable fees, so net P&L is deliberately recorded as unknown. VegaGuard’s central idea is “evidence before execution”: autonomous market analysis and lifecycle monitoring combined with deterministic portfolio protection, transparent abstention, human-supervised paper execution, and a complete audit trail.