Convene

Convene the Trading Legends Council on the symbol/timeframe/platform found in $ARGUMENTS (e.g. "convene BTCUSD 1h", "what does the council think of AAPL?", "convene the orderflow council on EURUSD"). Default timeframe is 1h if omitted.

0. Bootstrap (every run — cheap and idempotent)

Run scripts/setup.sh (in this skill's own directory) and capture its stdout as TLC_HOME (it clones/updates github.com/FXDavid-OffbeatForex/TLC under ~/.tlc/ and installs requirements.txt into an isolated venv at $TLC_HOME/.venv). cd "$TLC_HOME" and add the venv to PATH before every command below: export PATH="$TLC_HOME/.venv/bin:$TLC_HOME/.venv/Scripts:$PATH" (POSIX venvs use bin, Windows-native venvs use Scripts — only one will exist, so prepending both is safe everywhere). This makes plain python3 (or python on Windows, which usually has no python3 shim) resolve to the venv with deps installed — not to any other Python that happens to be on PATH (e.g. the harness's own bundled interpreter), which would silently run against the wrong environment and fail with confusing import errors. If the script fails, report the exact error — do not fall back to a half-installed run.

Do all of this skill's work in the terminal tool, inside $TLC_HOME — never execute_code or any other code-sandbox tool for tlc.* commands. Those sandboxes are a separate, isolated Python environment without this project's venv, MetaTrader5, or MBT's core module, so a tlc.* call there fails with a misleading ModuleNotFoundError/NotImplementedError. Three rules follow:

• An import/ModuleNotFoundError is almost never a real data outage. It means the wrong tool ran the command, or the venv/cwd from §0 didn't carry into this call. Re-assert cd "$TLC_HOME" + the PATH export in terminal and retry there. Never let such an error override data you already fetched successfully earlier in the same conversation — reuse that data, don't discard it.
• Read and write this skill's files in terminal too — temp frames.json/ packet.json/ballot.json, spec files, config.yaml/.env. Every path here is relative to $TLC_HOME; if you use any other tool for a file, give it the absolute path under $TLC_HOME, or the next terminal command won't find it.
• The fetched OHLCV packet is your only market-data source. Never substitute a price or quote from web search, a browser, or any other tool — that is a subtler form of fabricating data.

0b. First-run setup (auto-configure — runs ONLY when config is missing)

Still inside $TLC_HOME, check for config: ls .env config.yaml 2>/dev/null.

• Both present → already configured. Continue, and do NOT re-prompt for anything (including a TV key): if TradingView is enabled but .env has no TVR_API_KEY, say so once, only the first time a TV symbol is actually requested — never nag it on every run.

• Missing → this is first-run setup. Auto-configure. Do NOT run a question wizard, and never ask about "engine" or "alerts" (Hermes runs the model and handles scheduling/delivery — those TLC settings don't apply here). Do this:

  Setup gate — finish steps 2 and 3 before anything else. After writing config, do NOT convene, fetch data, or answer the request until setup is complete. Until then the only things you may emit are the MT5-terminal choice (step 2, when more than one terminal is running) or the TradingView-key prompt (step 3).

  1. Write config.yaml from config.example.yaml: enabled_platforms: [mt5, tradingview], default_platform: mt5, no bridge_url (Docker/ remote only). Write a blank .env scaffold.
  2. MT5 — the zero-config, no-key default. MBT lives at $TLC_HOME/MBT (clone github.com/FXDavid-OffbeatForex/MBT there + pip install -r MBT/requirements.txt if absent); tlc.providers.mt5 puts it on sys.path, so no bridge is needed. Before any fetch, count the running MT5 terminals (Get-Process terminal64 on Windows / pgrep -f terminal64 under Wine):
     • exactly one → mt5.initialize() auto-attaches; leave mt5_path blank.
     • more than one → you MUST list them and ask the user which one, then set mt5_path in MBT/config.yaml to their choice. Never silently pick.
     • none running → search C:\Program Files\**\terminal64.exe and confirm.
  3. TradingView key — ask once here (first-run only, never again). Tell the user TV is optional and needs a free key from tvremix.xyz (account → API keys), then let them add it now or skip:
     • Desktop/local: open $TLC_HOME/.env (code .env / reveal it) and have them paste it in a real editor and save — key stays in the file, not chat.
     • Telegram/remote: they send it; save to $TLC_HOME/.env immediately (and delete their message if the channel supports it). Or "skip" — MT5 works with no key. If skipped, leave TVR_API_KEY blank; TradingView stays unavailable until someone adds it to $TLC_HOME/.env (it's one shared file — set once, works from every interface). Do not re-ask on later runs.

  Never invent or hardcode a key; never put a real secret in config.yaml. Then continue (do not report a "config missing" failure — you just fixed it).

0c. Open-trade gate (ONLY when the request asks for it)

TLC's own scheduler (tlc.cron) gates every fire so it alerts one trade at a time — while the last signalled trade is still open (neither stop nor target hit) it skips convening entirely (no LLM call, no re-alert), and emits a single WIN/LOSS when it resolves. Hermes runs this convene as a raw prompt, which bypasses that wrapper, so the gate must be invoked here — but only for a scheduled, gated run, never for an ad-hoc "convene EURUSD".

Trigger — gate this run if, and only if, $ARGUMENTS asks for it: a --gate token, or wording like "open-trade gate", "gated", "one trade at a time", "don't re-alert while a trade is open". A Hermes cron prompt enables it explicitly, e.g. "every hour convene EURUSD 1h with the open-trade gate and send to Discord." If no such signal is present, skip this whole section and convene normally.

When gated, derive the stable schedule name (shared with tlc.cron state) and run phase 1 (check) before doing any other work:

NAME=$(python3 -c "import sys;from tlc.cron import make_name;print(make_name(sys.argv[1],sys.argv[2]))" <SYMBOL> <TF>)
python3 -m tlc.trade_gate check "$NAME" <SYMBOL> <TF> [--platform tv|mt5]

Read its last decision line:

• SKIP … → the previous trade is still open (or a fire is in flight). Stop here — do NOT build a packet, fetch data, convene, or alert. If the output also has an OUTCOME {…} line, a trade just resolved: relay that win/loss to the user through the Hermes channel, then stop.
• PROCEED … → clear to convene. If an OUTCOME {…} line is present, the previous trade resolved this fire — deliver that WIN/LOSS first (it won't come through any other channel here), then continue to §1 and convene normally.

After you finish §3 (verdict aggregated + saved to data/verdicts.jsonl), run phase 2 (record) so the new signal becomes the tracked open trade:

python3 -m tlc.trade_gate record "$NAME" <SYMBOL> <TF> [--platform tv|mt5]

A LONG/SHORT verdict is now tracked; the next gated fire will skip until it resolves. A NO_TRADE verdict tracks nothing (the gate stays open). Run record even if the verdict was NO_TRADE — it advances the checkpoint.

1. Build the market packet (once, shared by all legends — fairness)

• Parse intent + normalize the symbol/timeframe (see tlc/normalize.py).
• Resolve the platform (explicit tv/mt5 token in $ARGUMENTS → asset-class auto-route → config.yaml default; see AGENTS.md §Platform resolution) and the native symbol.
• Pull bars for the frames 15m, 1h, 4h, 1d (≈200 bars each):
  • mt5 → the registered MCP tool for MT5 bars (MBT's get_ohlcv), if registered in this Hermes environment; else python3 -m tlc.data_desk <symbol> <tf> --platform mt5.
  • tradingview → the registered MCP tool for TradingView bars (tvremix's get_ohlcv), if registered; else the headless shortcut: python3 -m tlc.data_desk <symbol> <tf> --platform tv (needs TVR_API_KEY in .env — see §0 of AGENTS.md).
• Never fabricate market data. If every fetch path fails (no MCP registered, no API key, network error, timeout), stop and report the failure plainly — which path you tried and why it failed. Do not estimate, guess, or invent bars/prices/indicators to keep going. A wrong "I couldn't get data" is safe; an invented ballot is not.
• Build the packet (this also computes ATR per timeframe and tags platform): write {platform, symbol, anchor_timeframe, frames} to a temp JSON and run python3 -m tlc.market_packet <frames.json> <packet.json>. Every legend MUST receive this identical packet — no legend gets extra data.
• Deterministic indicators are per-legend, not shared. Any legend whose spec declares needs: computes its own exact readings in its blind step (see tlc/legends/_single_legend_flow.md §3b: python3 -m tlc.indicators <packet.json> --needs …). Keep them out of the shared packet so no legend sees another school's numbers.

2. Determine the council, then collect ballots (BLIND, in parallel)

Pick the roster:

• Default (no council named): the canonical 10 — dow, wyckoff, livermore, elliott, gann, demark, wilder, hosoda, weinstein, oneil.
• Custom (NL "convene the NAME council"): resolve members with python3 -m tlc.council show NAME — each member's spec path is my_legends/<id>.md first, then tlc/legends/<id>.md.

For each member, run the single-legend flow (tlc/legends/_single_legend_flow.md) against the same packet, using that legend's spec. Each returns one ballot JSON.

Legends vote independently — do not let one legend see another's vote.

3. Validate, persist, aggregate

• Validate each ballot (tlc.ballot.validate_ballot); drop invalid ones, noting why.
• Save all ballots to the local sink (data/ballots.jsonl).
• Run the Chairman to produce the verdict. Use the council's threshold/weights for a custom roster (tlc.council.council_settings); default threshold is 0.65. Write the ballots to a JSON array and run python3 -m tlc.run_council <ballots.json> --alert, or call tlc.chairman.aggregate(ballots, threshold=…, weights=…) directly.
• If this is a gated run (§0c), you MUST use run_council (not a direct aggregate() call) — it persists the verdict to data/verdicts.jsonl, which is exactly where record looks; a verdict that never lands there arms nothing and the gate silently stops gating. Then run the record phase so this verdict arms/clears the tracked open trade.
• About --alert: it pushes the verdict through TLC's own alert channels (alerts.enabled in $TLC_HOME/config.yaml, e.g. Telegram) — the same path scheduled fires use. It is a no-op when no channel is configured there (the Hermes auto-setup in §0b never enables one — Hermes normally delivers through its own channel instead), and NO_TRADE respects quiet_no_trade, so passing it unconditionally is safe and keeps alerting identical across harnesses for users who DID configure TLC alerts in the shared ~/.tlc config.

4. Present (mandatory — this is your final output)

Do not stop after collecting ballots, aggregating, or writing an internal verification note. Your final message to the user MUST be the ballot table + Chairman's verdict below — if you've done the work but haven't shown it, you are not done. (On weaker models it's easy to halt right before this step; don't.)

Show a table of the ballots (legend · direction · conviction · entry · stop · target · one-line thesis), then the Chairman's verdict: decision (LONG / SHORT / NO_TRADE), consensus %, entry, stop, target, R:R, and which legends were for / against / abstaining. Remember: a split council is NO_TRADE — standing aside is a valid, often correct, outcome.

This is analysis and a second opinion — never present it as a signal or financial advice.