The Playbook
AlphaWhisper is a dealer-positioning decision engine for option traders across every horizon, 0DTE scalps, intraday day trades, and multi-day swings. It tells you where price gravitates (Gravity), who's positioning ahead (Hawks), where dealers are stacked across time (Horizon), and when multiple signals align into a real setup (Quick & Multi-Week Swing). This page is the one-stop shop for how every piece works and how to use it from day one.
What AlphaWhisper is, and isn't
What it is: a tool that surfaces where institutional dealer hedging will pull, pin, or amplify price, then scores when that structure aligns with smart-money flow and intraday tape into a real setup, across three trading horizons:
- 0DTE day trading, Gravity Intraday + Orbit on 1m/5m/15m timeframes, KING/STORM/FLIP read for same-day expiry, Hawks flow alerts ≤15s old, the per-(strike × expiry) gamma map for SPX/SPY/QQQ.
- Intraday swings, Quick Swing engine (1-5 day horizon) scoring confluence across Gravity + Hawks + Darkpool + Index Sync. Setups fire on the dashboard and Discord when the score crosses 8/9.
- Multi-week swings, Multi-Week engine (5-20 day horizon) requiring persistent Hawks flow, heavy darkpool accumulation, and ≥3:1 R:R. Lower volume, higher conviction.
The signals are mechanical, not opinionated. Same engine, same rules, every symbol, every session.
What it isn't: an autopilot, a guaranteed win-rate, or a replacement for risk management. Every signal is a hypothesis, not a buy button. The House Rules at the bottom of this page exist to keep you alive long enough for the math to work.
Best for: option traders who want a structural read on SPY/SPX/QQQ for intraday + 0DTE scalps, and ~100 liquid single names scanned daily for swing setups. Works whether you trade once a week or twenty times a day.
Your first 5 minutes
If you do nothing else, do these in order:
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Open the dashboard and read Market PulseOne stance for the session: whether dealer hedging is absorbing moves or extending them, what the flow leans, and the index levels that matter today. Thirty seconds, and you know what kind of tape you are walking into before you look at a single ticker.
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Check the 🎯 Quick Swing + 📅 Multi-Week cards on the dashboardCompact cards showing today's high-conviction setups. Tap any card for the full detail modal (entry, target, stop, R:R, the reasons it fires).
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Open 🧲 Gravity for SPX/SPY/QQQThe dealer-positioning map. Use the expiry pills to pick your timeframe (
0DTEfor day-trading,weeklyfor swing). KING/STORM/FLIP at the top are the key levels for the session. -
Open 🪐 Orbit to see price action with GEX bands overlaidTradingView-style price chart with dealer-magnet bands drawn on the candles. Use timeframe pills (1m/5m/15m/1D) for your trading horizon. Fullscreen button top-right.
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Join the Discord channel so you get the alerts when you're away from the screenHawks alerts every 15s (whales printing), Quick Swing alerts 3×/day at 9:30/12:00/15:45 ET, Multi-Week ~2-3×/week. All are filtered for high-conviction and freshness, no spam.
The app tabs explained
The top nav (desktop) or bottom tab bar (mobile) carries seven views, and two more surfaces sit outside the tabs: Raven opens as a drawer from any view, and the Inbox is the line to the desk. Each one owns a different question. What you actually see depends on your plan, which is laid out in section 14.
Dashboard
Home / triageWhat it shows: Market Pulse (the whole platform's read in one strip), the Focus Trade of the Week (the single highest-conviction idea, deduped against the quick-swing list), the Big Move Radar (movers with a BULLISH / BEARISH bias badge and a 🌀 coiled-spring tag for names wound up to move), today's confluence setups, and the Verdicts for tracked symbols.
How to use it: First stop every morning. Verdicts come in three tiers: full setups (all conditions met), Leaning (a directional tilt, size small, collapsible detail), and Wait. Cards are sorted by score; click any symbol to drill into the detail panel.
AlphaWhisper Gravity
Dealer-positioning mapWhat it shows: The Readout strip (GRIP, KING, FLOOR, CEILING, FLIP, ± MOVE, the pre-entry numbers at a glance), then the strike ladder with GEX magnitudes and darkpool prints. Three sub-tabs:
- Intraday, the ladder you trade off, with the GEX / DEX / VEX / CHEX lens pills and the FOCUS / FULL FIELD depth switch (tight decision band vs every tracked strike).
- Horizon, multi-date matrix of dealer stacking. Weekly mode = 5 Fridays for swings; Daily mode (indices) = 0DTE plus ~2 weeks of sessions, with each column's own day-KING ⭐, OPEX chips, expected-move and week-over-week badges.
- Whisper, the live 0DTE agent: fired setup cards with lifecycle stamps, the WATCHING board, and the Track Record strip. Full guide in section 7.
How to use it: Read GRIP first (FIRM = fade edges, LOOSE = respect momentum), then KING / STORM / FLIP as the session's structural anchors. Trade with-the-magnet (long FLOOR / short CEILING) or watch for breaks of FLIP for regime shifts.
AlphaWhisper Hawks
Institutional flow trackerWhat it shows: Active "whale" bets, single-contract trades ≥$500k premium with ≥75% on the ask side (real buyers, not mixed flow). Each whale tracked from print → current mid → P&L since fill.
How to use it: Look for tickers where Hawks bias aligns with the Verdict and Gravity direction. A whale's coattail is much more useful when the structural read agrees. Filters: Fresh-only, by direction, by premium.
AlphaWhisper Orbit
Price chart with overlaysWhat it shows: A native TradingView-style candlestick chart with GEX strike-bands drawn behind the candles, KING/STORM/FLIP labeled lines projecting forward, and darkpool prints as purple dots anchored to the candle they hit.
How to use it: Pick a timeframe (1m/5m/15m for day trade, 1D for swing). The floating OHLC tooltip top-left follows your crosshair. Click ⛶ top-right for fullscreen. The chart refreshes live every 15-30s, your zoom stays put.
Mantis
LIVE · in testingWhat it shows: a desk blotter of Gravity-gated swing setups on single names and the index ETFs, each with a full plan: entry, a volatility-scaled stop with a close-based invalidation, two structural targets with their R:R and roles, 1R in dollars, the management plan, what the plan pays on the named contract, the structural read, and the other side of the trade.
How it decides: dealer positioning is the gate (no dealer thesis, no card), a balanced book is withheld, and every card is graded against real prices and real premium. See section 11 below.
Research
Market-wide huntWhat it shows: the scanners that look at the whole market rather than one symbol. Top Opportunities ranks names on a multi-factor hunt, Pre-Move Radar flags accumulation before the move shows up in price, and the Watchlist crosses top bullish names with flow.
How to use it: this is the tab for when you do not already have a ticker in mind. Start here, take the two or three names that survive, then go read them properly in Gravity and Hawks. A name that looks good in a scanner and has no dealer thesis behind it is not a trade.
Journal
Your book, your receiptsWhat it shows: your own trading book, private to your account and visible to nobody else. Trades with entry, exit, R and P&L; a running equity curve; per-setup and per-ticker breakdowns; written entries and market notes; multiple accounts; and a goal you are tracking toward. It replaced the old Portfolio tab, which only held positions.
How to use it: log the trade when you take it, not at the end of the week, and write the reason down while you still remember it. The single most useful number on the page is plan adherence: the share of trades where you did what you said you would. Most traders discover their win rate is fine and their discipline is not, and you cannot fix that without the count.
Raven
Ultimate · ask anythingWhat it is: the desk analyst. Raven is not a tab: it opens as a drawer on the right from wherever you already are, and it can read the same live platform data you are looking at. Ask it in plain English why SPX keeps stalling at a level, what the dealer map is actually saying, whether a Mantis card and the flow agree, or what changed since yesterday.
How to use it: ask it the question you would ask a colleague, not a keyword. "Why does QQQ keep rejecting 495?" gets you a real read; "QQQ" gets you a summary. It names the levels it used and what it does not know, and it will tell you when the honest answer is that there is no read.
What it does not do: it does not place trades, it does not predict, and it will not give you a number it cannot source. Raven is included with Ultimate. On a trial you get a small number of questions so you can see what it is before you decide.
Inbox
The desk lineWhat it shows: a private thread between you and Jay, plus platform announcements. Every account has it, on every plan.
How to use it: use it. If a card did not make sense, if a number looks wrong, or if something on the platform is broken, that thread is the fastest way to reach a human who can change it. Messages go only to Jay, never to other members.
The lexicon
Every term in the app, defined once. Bookmark this section.
Gravity levels (Strike-zone vocabulary)
Strongest positive-GEX strike above spot. Acts as a magnet, price gets pulled up to it and tends to pin or stall there. Bullish target when below it.
Strongest positive-GEX strike below spot. Acts as support, dealers buy the dip here. Bullish entry zone for swings.
Strongest negative-GEX strike below spot. Amplifier, if price breaks down to here, vol expands and the move accelerates. Bearish target for shorts.
Strongest negative-GEX strike above spot. In chop = resistance. In strong uptrends = fuel for a gamma squeeze (price often blows through it).
The zero-gamma line. Above = positive-gamma regime (dampened vol, mean-revert). Below = negative-gamma regime (amplified vol, trend). Crossing it = regime change.
Any large positive-GEX strike (above or below KING magnitude). Defended levels, price tends to bounce off them. The chart shows the top 2 walls beyond KING.
A meaningful positive-GEX strike between WALL and noise, pulls price toward it but with less force than KING. Useful as a near-term target.
The gatekeeper level between spot and the KING, the second-strongest gamma level in the path. Price must break it before the KING is in play, and failed tests here often precede a reversal. See section 5 for the full picture.
Flow + microstructure
Off-exchange institutional block trades. On the Gravity map they show as the 🌑 black-moon glyph beside the strike (🌑🌑 for heavy); on the Orbit chart the same prints plot as purple dots on the candle they hit. Heavy accumulation below spot = bullish positioning; heavy distribution above = bearish.
Our name for large directional bets (≥$500k premium, ≥75% one-sided). Each Hawk is a single trader making a big bet, useful "coattails" signal when aligned with structure.
A cross-tape read across SPX/SPY/QQQ. Bullish/Bearish when all 3 structurally agree; Diverged when they disagree; Tape Aligned when their actual intraday change overrides a mixed structural read.
Gamma Exposure. Dealers' hedging requirement at each strike. Positive GEX = dealers buy dips / sell rips (pinning). Negative GEX = dealers sell dips / buy rips (amplifying).
Days to expiration. 0DTE = same-day expiry. Quick Swing trades target 1-5d; Multi-Week targets 5-20d.
In Gravity, choose: 0DTE (same-day, day-trade focus), weekly (nearest Friday, default for indices), monthly (3rd Friday OPEX), all (aggregate across the whole chain, structural read).
The Readout strip + map depth
The one-word dealer regime at the top of Gravity. FIRM 🛡️ = dealers long gamma: they absorb moves, dips get bought, rips get sold, magnets and ranges rule. LOOSE 🔥 = dealers short gamma: they chase, breaks travel fast, respect momentum. MIXED ⚖️ = split book, trade level to level.
The expected move to the shown expiry, priced from the ATM straddle, the market's own consensus. Targets beyond the expected move need extra evidence; Whisper will not chase them late in the day.
Every strike is ranked against this symbol's own strongest level: DOMINANT (≥85% of max, deepest color), MAJOR (≥45%), MINOR (≥15%), FAINT. So a $1M wall on a mid-cap gets the same visual weight as a $1B wall on SPX.
The strike map's two depths. FOCUS (default) = the tight decision band around spot, phone-friendly. FULL FIELD = every strike we track (±15% on indices, ±25% on single names), the whole dealer landscape from day-trade walls to swing-distance shelves.
Four views of the same strikes. GEX = gamma (pin/amplify, the default). Δ DEX = delta exposure, directional hedge load. 🌊 VEX = vanna, how vol changes move dealer hedges. ⏳ CHEX = charm, how time decay moves them into the close. Structure labels (KING/FLIP) always stay GEX-based.
A run of strikes with almost no dealer hedging interest. Price entering an air pocket tends to slide through it fast, there is nothing there to slow it down. Never park a stop inside one; targets on the far side of one often fill quicker than they look.
Reading the Gravity map
Open Gravity, Intraday and you get a price ladder: one row per strike, biggest premium at the widest bar. Every row reads left to right the same way, and every badge on it has a precise meaning. This is the full legend, one flashcard per symbol with an example.
the level, high to low top to bottom.
colored by zone, length equals gamma strength.
net dealer GEX parked at that strike. Bigger equals stronger.
zone pill plus any special markers. Explained below.
Zone pills, what kind of level it is
The colored word next to the value tells you how dealers behave at that strike.
Strong positive dealer gamma. Dealers buy dips and sell rips here, so price gets pulled in and pins. A gravity well.
Strong negative dealer gamma. Dealers must chase the move, so price accelerates through it. The opposite of a magnet.
A heavy call-heavy ceiling above price. Dealer-defended resistance. Price tends to stall or reverse into it until it breaks on real volume.
A put-heavy support level below price. Dealer-defended demand. Bounces are likely here until it breaks.
The regime line. Above it dealers dampen volatility (price pins and mean-reverts). Below it they amplify (price trends and gets volatile).
The whole map is moving fast, dealer positioning is unstable right now. The read cannot be trusted.
Low dealer pressure, no measurable gamma edge at that strike.
Special markers, the badges after the value
These call out the most important strikes on the map.
The single strongest magnet on the entire map. The biggest gravity well, where price most wants to go.
The single strongest amplifier on the map. Where volatility explodes through if price reaches it.
The gatekeeper level between spot and the KING. Price has to break it before the KING is in play, and failed tests here often precede a reversal.
Institutions printed real block size at that strike off-exchange. One moon is notable, two moons is heavy. Acts as hidden support or resistance separate from the gamma story.
Two independent signals line up at the exact same strike (for example a big gamma level that is also a round number or has a darkpool print). Confluence levels hold harder than single-signal ones.
The orange badge with the number. Three or more signals agree at once (gamma plus round plus darkpool plus sentinel, etc). The highest-conviction line on the whole map. The number is how many signals stacked.
◀ spot marks where price is right now. ◀ zero-gamma flip marks the regime pivot line. They orient you: everything above and below reads off these two anchors.
The net dealer gamma exposure sitting at that strike, in dollars. It is the raw strength number behind the bar length. Bigger equals a stronger, stickier level.
The two swing engines
Both engines score setups out of 9 points using the same 6 confluence criteria, calibrated for different time horizons.
Setup zone: spot near a FLOOR (within 1%) or MAGNET (within 0.5%).
Target: KING above spot, 0.5–4% upside.
R:R floor: 2:1 minimum.
Discord alert: score ≥ 8/9 + alert window (post-open or pre-close) + cooldown.
Dashboard threshold: score ≥ 5/9 (still visible, just not alerted).
Setup zone: spot near a FLOOR (within 3%, wider band for multi-week).
Target: major magnet above spot, 4–15% upside.
R:R floor: 3:1 minimum (multi-week needs bigger payoff to justify the hold).
Persistence required: Hawks bullish for 3+ distinct days (filters one-shot prints).
Heavy DP required: ≥$100M institutional accumulation at/below spot.
Discord alert: score ≥ 7/9 + R:R ≥ 3 + cap of 3/week.
The 6 scoring criteria (max 9 pts)
- L1, Setup zone (+1 or +2): spot near FLOOR (+2) or MAGNET (+1)
- L2, Target structure (+2): KING above spot in actionable range
- L3, Regime (+1): spot above FLIP (positive-gamma mean-revert mode)
- L4, Smart-money lean (+1 or +2): Hawks bullish bias ≥2 (+2) or ≥1 (+1)
- L5, Institutional positioning (+1): darkpool accumulation at/below spot ≥$50M
- L6, Cross-tape (+1): Index Sync · Bullish
Mirror logic for SHORT setups (CEILING / STORM / below FLIP / bearish Hawks / DP distribution / Index Sync bearish).
The Whisper agent 🦉
Whisper is the deterministic 0DTE decider that rides the live Gravity loop on SPX / SPY / QQQ. It is not an LLM and it does not guess: each known setup is a checklist, and Whisper fires only when every box clears: structure, tape agreement, session context, and enough clock left to reach the target. Most sessions it fires a handful of times or not at all. Silence is a feature.
The five archetypes
Dealers FIRM, spot above the flip, the day's KING above within reach, FLOOR close underneath. Pin mechanics grind price up to the magnet. The classic slow-bleed-higher day.
Spot below the flip with a STORM in reach below and AMPLIFYING dealers. Their hedging accelerates the drop toward the storm strike. The break-goes-faster-than-you-think day.
Index Sync says SPX, SPY and QQQ all lean the same way AND this symbol's own structure agrees. The whole tape rowing in one direction, the cross-index version of the trade.
Price flushes through a reference level (prior close, open, an established session low), fails to follow through, and reclaims it with the tape turning. The trap springs on the shorts. Reference levels must be at least 35 minutes old, a level has to exist before it can be retested.
The mirror image: price pokes above a reference level (session high, open, prior close), gets refused, and rolls back through with put-side tape. Failed auction at a known price.
👁 WATCHING, silence with reasoning
When nothing has fired, Whisper shows the closest setup per symbol with its checklist score ("3/4 met") and exactly which condition is still open. You always know why it is quiet, and which box the market still has to tick. Watching cards are not entries; they are the pre-flight board.
Signal lifecycle, read the stamp before you act
Every fired card carries a live status so nobody jumps into a stale signal:
- 🟢 FRESH, fired inside the last 10 minutes, spot still near the entry.
- 🔵 ACTIVE, still live; check spot against the signal entry before acting.
- 🚀 IN FLIGHT, already 40%+ of the way to target. The entry window has passed, do not chase.
- 🎯 TARGET HIT / ⛔ STOPPED, resolved. The card is a receipt now, not an entry.
- 🌙 SESSION CLOSED, the 0DTE session ended before either level traded.
📊 The Track Record, receipts not promises
Whisper is still in training and is not part of any plan yet, so this section describes how it is measured rather than something you can open today. The strip at the top of the Whisper tab is the honest tape: every fire is persisted the second it happens, the outcome (target vs stop on the underlying) is stamped at tick time, and a paper account mirrors every signal with real sandbox fills, entries at fire, exits when the level trades, flat by 15:55 ET. Wins, losses and session-closes are all counted; if a gap crosses both levels between ticks, it counts as a stop. The scorecard breaks it down per day and per archetype, so you can see not just whether Whisper wins, but which setups carry the edge.
Reading the confluence cards
The dashboard shows compact cards, symbol, direction, score, R:R, target, stop. Tap any card for the full detail modal.
AAPL ▲ LONG 7/9
R:R 2.3 Target $158 +3.2% Stop $148
Tap for full details ›
Shows: spot price · entry / target / stop / R:R tripod · the "Why it fires" list (every confluence reason that contributed) · "Open full analysis →" button that jumps to the per-ticker dashboard detail view.
The card color border = direction (green for LONG, red for SHORT). The score chip color tier: 7+ = high-conviction, 5-6 = mid, below 5 = doesn't show.
Index Sync, when SPX/SPY/QQQ agree (or don't)
Index Sync measures whether the three major index ETFs' dealer-positioning structures agree on bias. Five possible states:
All three indices structurally bullish (KING above, above FLIP). Conviction multiplier is real, longs carry weight.
All three structurally bearish. Shorts carry weight. Long premium plays should expect headwind.
No clear directional bias on any of the three. Trade individual structure, not broad tape.
Structures disagree (one bullish, one bearish). Macro positioning unclear at the gamma level, reduce size or stand aside.
Structures mixed BUT all three indices are clearly moving the same direction intraday (≥0.3%). Tape outranks gamma, trade the tape.
The Tape Aligned state is a "tape sanity gate", it prevents the confusing "structure says Diverged but price is clearly rallying" reads we used to see.
Where the receipts are
Anyone can show you winners. What matters is whether the losers are still in the file. Here is every place in the platform where the record is kept, and what each one is for.
A card does not disappear when it goes wrong. Each one is followed to its outcome against real prices: target reached, stopped out, or expired at the time limit, with how far it ran in your favour before it turned and how far it went against you first. Nothing is removed, and nothing is re-scored after the fact.
Under the Mantis board, the graded cards are cut by setup, ticker, direction and band. Per cut you get the count, wins and losses, average R and total R, how often the first target was reached, and the average move for and against. Read the R columns before the win rate. A cut can win often and still lose money, which is the trap a win-rate-only record walks you into, so sizing follows expectancy first and hit rate second. The panel also carries the stop checks: the same cards graded under a wick-through stop and a close-through stop, and under an ATR stop and a structural one, so the rule the cards use has to keep earning its place.
The record that decides your results is yours, not ours. The Journal tracks your trades, your equity curve and your per-setup breakdown, private to your account. The most useful number on it is plan adherence, the share of trades where you did what you said you would. Most traders find their win rate is fine and their discipline is not, and you cannot fix that without the count.
What you will not see, and why. The engine-level instrumentation, the score-bucket and per-criterion edge reports and the data-quality audit, is admin-only. Those panels expose internal state, cross-system disagreements and half-accumulated samples, and a number built on eleven observations reads like a fact long before it is one. They exist to decide what ships, not to be traded off. What reaches you instead is the graded record above, which is the same honesty with the noise taken out.
Mantis, the swing agent
LIVE · graded daily · in testing
Mantis is a patient swing-trading agent for single names and the index ETFs, named for the predator that waits motionless and strikes only when the target is in range. It hunts multi-day option swings the way the desk does: dealer positioning first, everything else as confirmation. It is advisory. It surfaces the idea, the plan and the evidence; you pull the chart and decide. No card is ever meant to be taken blind.
Receipts so far: ETHA +141%, AAPL +70%, MSFT +63%, META 613 → 647, and this week QQQ +96% on the Sep 25 720 call after the card said "long as long as 700 holds" through the FOMC drop. Those are the hits. The misses are in the same journal, next to them, and the journal is what you should read.
How a card gets made
- Universe. ~130 names: the discovered movers, every theme cluster (mega caps, memory, AI infrastructure, nuclear, crypto, small caps...) and the index constituents. Leveraged wrappers (TQQQ, SPXL, SOXL and their kin) are excluded: their chains are too thin to read and their thesis is the 1x thesis.
- Technicals. Weekly and daily trend, RSI, ATR, relative volume, and one of five setup archetypes: trend pullback, breakout + retest, base breakout, MA reclaim, failed breakdown (and their short mirrors).
- The Gravity gate. The dealer map across five expiries plus the ticker's own darkpool block walls and the week-over-week positioning shift. No dealer thesis, no card, ever. The heaviest structure below spot (with a block wall behind it) is a long; the mirror is a short.
- Tilt. The share of dealer gamma sitting below versus above spot, weighted so a node at price this week outvotes a far, far-dated wall. A book split 45–55 is balanced and is withheld: no card, listed in the "Withheld as balanced" drawer with its structure read so you can still see the map. A card whose direction runs against the heavier side carries a GAMMA AHEAD flag.
- Confirmation score, 0 to 100. Gravity 35, technicals 25, institutional flow 20, sector rotation 12, contract quality 8. Penalties after: earnings inside the hold window −15 (and a hard flag), thin contract −10, weekly-trend conflict −10, runner R:R under 1.2 −8, macro events −5. 55 is the floor. Below it the idea is journaled, never shown, except in the muted "below the floor" strip.
- The contract. A 14–25 day expiry, 0.30–0.50 delta, liquidity-checked (open interest, spread). A setup with no tradeable contract is a chart, not a trade.
The plan on every card
- Entry is the price at the time of the read, with the archetype's trigger in words ("on strength through 709.92 while the 10-day low held").
- Stop is 1.2 ATR from entry (volatility-scaled, the dashboard's 43% → 61% lesson). Invalidation is a daily close through it. A wick through the stop is a warning the board flags as STOP TAGGED; the close decides, and if it closes through, the exit is that close, so a loss can exceed 1R. Gap risk is yours.
- T1 and T2 come from a ladder of real structure ahead of the trade: dealer nodes (magnets and gatekeepers, from the sign of their gamma), darkpool walls, and vanna nodes (VEX, where dealer delta hedging accelerates as implied vol moves with price). T1 sits where most cards actually travel (about 0.75 ATR), T2 is the runner (about 1.75 ATR), capped at what the horizon can plausibly deliver. Each target names its source and role.
- 1R in dollars is printed on every card: entry, stop, per-share risk, percent of entry. Every R on the card is measured from that entry and that stop, never from a floor below spot.
- The management plan: take 50% at T1 and move the stop to breakeven, 30% at T2, trail the last 20% by 1 ATR. That is what turns a high T1 hit rate into protected R instead of a coin flip.
- What the plan pays on the reference contract: the premium at T1, T2 and the stop for the named option, delta-only, so it understates on the way up. Same trade, in the units you actually trade.
- The contract is an example, not the trade. Mantis names one liquid 14 to 25 day, 0.30 to 0.50 delta contract so the plan can be graded in premium and so you can see what 1R looks like in option terms. The levels are the product. Take the strike, expiry or spread you are comfortable with: an expiry at least a week past the hold window survives a slow start, higher delta tracks the underlying and bleeds less, a vertical caps the loss. Size from the "at stop" line: contracts = (account × risk per trade) ÷ (premium × 100 × stop loss %). Risking 1% of a $25,000 account on a $9 contract whose stop is minus 73% is one contract, not five.
- The other side: the bear case for a long (or bull case for a short) in two sentences: the heavier structure on the far side and the close that proves the card wrong.
- Long-dated structure: the top nodes in the trade direction from the heaviest expiry beyond 60 days, with how many expected moves away they sit. A node beyond two expected moves is marked dormant: context, never a 7-day target.
- The structural read: Holding, Capping, Blocks, Vanna, Weight and a one-line Read, the way a desk describes a book. Roles come from the sign of each node in the end-of-day book; at crowded strikes the sign can be flipped, so read the role as a hypothesis and let price confirm it.
Reading the board
The Mantis tab is a desk blotter, not a card grid. The strip on top says what the book is: open ideas, net direction (a 100% long book is a warning, not a signal), index-equivalent exposure (SPY plus the heavyweights that move it are one bet), and data flags. Rows sit in four lanes by what they need from you: At the zone (price is in the entry band: the only rows that need a decision today), Armed, not triggered (plan set, price has not arrived), Fresh, unconfirmed (flagged after the close, wants one session of confirmation), and Gone without you (it ran past the entry; chasing here is how a good setup becomes a bad trade). Tap a row for the plan, the evidence, the contract, the structural read, the other side, and any warnings: ILLIQUID, TARGETS INVERTED, EARNINGS, DUPLICATE (same index in two wrappers), STOP TAGGED, GAMMA AHEAD.
A real card from this week
What happened: the market sold off through the Fed decision that afternoon, the 700 floor held on the close, and T1 printed the next morning. Read a card top-down in the order the agent decided: who, the plan, what proves it wrong, the evidence, the vehicle. Then open the chart. The card tells you where the structure is; the chart tells you whether price respects it today.
Cadence, lifecycle, and how it learns
Five scans a day (8:45 pre-market, 10:15 open drive, 1:00 midday, 3:05 power hour, 4:40 post-close), a monitor every 15 minutes in between, and the close-based stop settlement after the bell. A card lives LIVE → TRIGGERED → T1 ✓ → T2 / closed through stop / expired; the plan you were given is never rewritten by a later scan (a refresh may update the judgement, never the entry, stop or targets), and a card retires with a reason when the thesis flips or the setup relocates by more than an ATR.
Every candidate in every scan is journaled, including the ones that never became cards. Every retired card is graded on daily bars, and every named contract is graded minute by minute ("could you have taken profit?"). Two stop rules are graded side by side on every card (wick-through versus close-through) and the ATR stop is graded against a structural stop (the next node past the floor, minus 1%), so the rule that stays is the one the record supports. The Setup journal on the tab cuts the graded record by ticker, setup, volatility, direction, horizon and gamma tilt, and sizes each cut FULL / HALF / STARTER / AVOID once it clears six trades. Kairos, the inference engine, reads the same cards and outcomes and is learning a calibrated probability for each one.
Why "in testing": the scoring weights are a prior, not a finding, until the journal has enough trades to re-fit them (the first 100 is the bar). Until then the curated two or three strongest cards a day go to the Mantis channel in Discord with the full plan attached, and the tab itself opens to members as it earns it. Pull the chart. Size like the number could be wrong, because on some days it is.
Discord alerts, what fires & when
Every alert channel is gated for high conviction and freshness. Goal: ~5-10 actionable pings per RTH day total, never a spam stream.
Cadence: 15-second polling on the live flow-alerts feed.
Fires when: single contract ≥$750k premium, ≥75% ask-side, printed within last 3 minutes.
Freshness gate: we refuse to fire if the print is already >3 min old, by then the entry window has closed.
Latency stamp: embed shows both "Printed HH:MM:SS ET (Ns ago)" and "Posted HH:MM:SS ET" so you can verify the timing yourself.
Cadence: 30-second polling.
Fires when: ≥$250k premium + vol/OI ≥3× + ≥80% one-sided.
Format: compact list of all hits in the last poll window, top 5 by score, with net directional lean.
Cadence: 3 scheduled scans/day at 09:30 ET, 12:00 ET, 15:45 ET.
Fires when: score ≥ 8/9, inside an alert window, per-symbol 24h cooldown, daily cap of 5.
Inside the alert: symbol, direction, score, R:R, entry / target / stop, the reasons it fires.
Cadence: same scheduled scans as Quick Swing.
Fires when: score ≥ 7/9 + R:R ≥ 3 + per-setup 5-day cooldown, weekly cap of 3.
Cadence: event-driven only, heartbeat posts retired in v77.20.
Always fires: REGIME_CHANGE (CALM→TAIL_POS etc.), MAP_DIRTY ⇄ MAP_STABLE transitions.
Gated fires: KING/STORM/FLIP strike moves require ≥0.5% of spot + ≥$10M premium delta, per-symbol 30 min cooldown, daily cap of 5 across SPX/SPY/QQQ.
Realistic volume: 3-5 posts/day on normal days, 1-2 on quiet days.
During RTH: silent, you have the DQ badge in the header.
Off-hours: only persistent CRITICAL issues (appeared in 2+ consecutive cycles) fire. Filters one-shot upstream timeouts that resolve themselves.
The 10 House Rules
The map gives you edge. These rules keep you alive long enough to use it. Capital first; every rule below derives from that one.
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Capital first. Edge second.
Protect what you have before you try to grow it. No setup is worth blowing up the account that takes the next setup. Position size assumes you'll be wrong sometimes.
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Trade the edges. Skip the middle.
Fade reversals at WALLs, FLOORs, and KING magnets. The middle of the range has symmetric risk and no edge. If you're not at a structural level, you're guessing.
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Asymmetric or pass.
If the trade isn't at least 2:1 reward-to-risk from a clear structural level, don't take it. Win rate doesn't matter if you bleed on losses. R:R is the math that compounds.
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Confluence beats conviction.
A KING with a darkpool print at it, plus Index Sync agreement, plus price action confirming, that's a real setup. A KING alone is a hypothesis. Layer signals before you size up. (This is exactly what the Quick / Multi-Week confluence engines score.)
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Don't fight reshuffles.
When the map turns dirty (MAP_DIRTY transition fires), levels are unreliable. The right move is to pause. Re-engage when the structure settles (MAP_STABLE). Patience compounds.
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Honor calendar hazards.
Monthly OPEX, Liquidation Window (3:30 PM ET onward), earnings, FOMC, these distort positioning. Use lighter size or stand aside until clarity returns.
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Long fear, short greed.
Mean-revert at the extremes. Red candles into a FLOOR with positive GEX = buy. Green candles into a WALL with darkpool sellers = fade. The crowd is most wrong at the edges.
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Size matches confidence.
8/9 confluence + Index Sync aligned + Hawks confirming = standard size. 5/9 with one missing signal = half size. Diverged or shifting = no size. Never max-size on hope.
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Don't let a green trade go red.
If a trade gets to 1R in your favor, move stop to breakeven. If it gets to 2R, take partial. Markets give back winners that aren't protected. The best loss is the one you avoid by exiting.
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Walk away after impact.
After a big win or a big loss, your judgment is compromised. Either way, the next trade is the most dangerous one. Step away. Come back when you're flat-minded.
What your plan includes
Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial and no card. The trial opens almost everything so you can judge the platform on the real thing rather than a tour, including a small number of Raven questions. Nothing charges automatically at the end of it.
| What you get | Basic $39/mo | Pro $119/mo | Ultimate $279/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dashboard, Journal and this Playbook | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Gravity, the dealer-positioning map | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Symbols you can read | SPX, SPY, QQQ | Every ticker | Every ticker |
| Hawks institutional flow | No | Yes | Yes |
| Orbit chart with dealer overlays | No | Yes | Yes |
| Research scanners and swing setups | No | Yes | Yes |
| Mantis, the swing agent | No | Yes | Yes |
| Raven, the desk analyst | No | No | Yes |
| Inbox, the line to the desk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Basic is the index complex on purpose. SPX, SPY and QQQ are where dealer positioning is cleanest and where most of the day's real information sits, so it is a whole product rather than a crippled one. Pro opens the map to every ticker and adds the flow, the chart and the swing agent. Ultimate adds Raven, which is the only feature here with a real per-use cost behind it, which is why it sits where it sits.
Two agents, Whisper (0DTE session agent) and the SPX agent, appear in the platform and in this manual but are not sold yet. They are still being validated forward, and we would rather explain them here than sell them early.
Next step: the Setup Library
The Playbook explains the system. The Setup Library shows you the five named dealer-positioning patterns to recognize visually on the chart, what they look like, when they show up, and the trade behavior for each.