Edge Research Ticket Generator

This skill formalizes the process of turning a trading hypothesis or anomaly into a structured, reproducible research ticket. It's the first step in the quantitative research pipeline, ensuring that ideas are well-defined and testable before any backtesting code is written.

When to Use This Skill

• User has a trading idea or hypothesis (e.g., "I think stocks that do X tend to go up").
• User observes a market anomaly and wants to investigate it systematically.
• User wants to create a new candidate for the trade-strategy-pipeline.
• Triggers: "research ticket," "new strategy idea," "test this hypothesis," "is this an edge?".

Workflow: From Idea to Pipeline-Ready Spec

Step 1: Idea Ingestion

The skill prompts the user for the core components of their idea:

• Hypothesis: A clear, one-sentence statement of the proposed edge.
• Entry Signal: The specific conditions that trigger a buy.
• Exit Signal: The conditions that trigger a sell (e.g., target profit, stop-loss, time-based).
• Universe: The group of stocks to test this on (e.g., S&P 500, Nasdaq 100).
• Rationale: Why should this edge exist? (Behavioral, structural, etc.).

Step 2: Ticket Generation

The edge-generator CLI tool takes these inputs and creates a structured research ticket in Markdown format.

edge-generator create \
  --hypothesis "Stocks hitting a 52-week high with high volume have momentum." \
  --entry "Price > 52-week high AND Volume > 2x 50-day avg volume" \
  --exit "5-day hold OR 10% profit target OR 5% stop-loss" \
  --universe "sp500" \
  --rationale "Breakout momentum, high volume confirms institutional interest."

This generates a file like tickets/ER-2026-015_52_week_high_momentum.md.

Ticket Structure:

• ID: ER-YYYY-NNN
• Title: Short description of the idea.
• Hypothesis: As provided.
• Entry/Exit/Universe/Rationale: As provided.
• Data Requirements: Lists the data needed (e.g., daily OHLCV, 52-week high, 50-day avg volume).
• Priority Score: An initial score (0-100) based on uniqueness, rationale strength, and testability.

Step 3: Prioritization

The skill can rank all open tickets in the tickets/ directory to help decide what to research next.

edge-generator prioritize

This updates the priority scores based on factors like:

• Novelty: How similar is this to previously tested (and failed) ideas?
• Data Availability: Can this be tested with our current data sources?
• Computational Cost: Is the backtest likely to be fast or slow?

Step 4: Export to Pipeline Spec

Once a ticket is prioritized and approved for research, this skill exports it to the format required by the trade-strategy-pipeline.

edge-generator export ER-2026-015

This creates a directory pipeline-candidates/ER-2026-015/ containing:

• strategy.yaml: The machine-readable definition of the strategy.

  version: edge-finder-candidate/v1
  name: 52-Week High Momentum
  hypothesis: Stocks hitting a 52-week high with high volume have momentum.
  entry:
    - "price > high_52w"
    - "volume > 2 * avg_volume_50d"
  exit:
    - "hold_days == 5"
    - "pct_change >= 0.10"
    - "pct_change <= -0.05"
  universe: "sp500"
  

• metadata.json: Additional context for the pipeline runner.

  {
    "ticketId": "ER-2026-015",
    "rationale": "Breakout momentum, high volume confirms institutional interest.",
    "priority": 85,
    "dataRequirements": ["daily_ohlcv", "high_52w", "avg_volume_50d"]
  }
  

Step 5: Handoff to Backtest Engine

The generated directory is now ready to be processed by the einstein-research-backtest-engine skill, which will execute the backtest based on the strategy.yaml spec.

Why This Is Important

• Reproducibility: Every research effort starts with a formal, version-controlled definition.
• Efficiency: Prevents wasted time on ill-defined ideas.
• Systematic Process: Ensures a consistent and rigorous approach to alpha research.
• Automation: The strategy.yaml format allows the backtesting process to be fully automated.

This skill is the gateway to the entire quantitative research pipeline, turning qualitative ideas into testable, machine-readable artifacts.