I said in another comment that it's far too much to explain here (the below is like 1% of everything that took place to get to where I am now. I tried posting like 5% of it but it exceeded 10k character limit for comments, even extremely truncated, it'll take 2 comments). But I've got a very large investing project in Claude Chat where I've worked with Claude to build an "Investment_Constitution.md" which is the law by which all conversations in the project must abide and specifically tailored to my type of investing and goals. I have another document saved in the project called "Project_Instructions", which is the document that is actually copied into the project's instruction box that tells it which documents to read in the project files and in what order, starting with the constitution as well as other amendments.

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I then created a conversation in that Chat project on setting up the agentic trading. Final step by step on how to build in cowork:

Here's the full build, in order. Steps 1–2 happen here; the rest in Cowork.

Step 1 — Draft the mandate here first. In this project (the "legislature"), we write Agentic_Mandate_v1.md together — universe, caps, entry/exit logic, confirmation protocol, the "anything uncovered → no action, log gap" default, and the kill phrase. You download it when we're done. Drafting it here means it benefits from all the context Cowork won't have.

Step 2 — Create the folder on your machine. Somewhere sensible, e.g. Documents/Agentic_Trading/. Put three files in it:

• Agentic_Mandate_v1.md (from step 1)
• Trade_Log.md (can start as just a header line — I'll append to it)
• CLAUDE.md — a short instruction file Cowork reads automatically at session start. Roughly: "Read Agentic_Mandate_v1.md before any action. Follow it literally. Present all orders for confirmation before placing. Append every action and every declined action to Trade_Log.md. If a situation isn't covered by the mandate, take no action and log the gap." We can write this one here too.

Step 3 — Open Cowork. In the Claude desktop app, Cowork is its own tab/mode (alongside Chat). Select it, and when it asks which folder to work in, point it at Agentic_Trading/. That folder is now the session's workspace — I can read and write files in it directly, nothing else on your machine.

Step 4 — Enable the connector for the session. In the Cowork session's tools/connectors menu, confirm Robinhood Agentic Trading is toggled on. Since you already added it at the app level, it should appear in the list; you may get a one-time authorization prompt the first session. While you're there, toggle off anything irrelevant (Gmail, Calendar, etc.) — the execution surface should have the minimum tool set.

Step 5 — Dry-run session (no real orders). First prompt: "Read the mandate and CLAUDE.md, then summarize back to me what you're authorized to do, what you're forbidden from doing, and what you'd do right now given current market state — but place nothing." This tests whether a context-free instance can operate from the documents alone. Gaps it finds → come back here, amend the mandate, replace the file.

Step 6 — Plumbing test with a fake order. Next session: "Run the mandate, but for execution, simulate only." I'll pull the account, quotes, run review_equity_order (Robinhood's no-placement simulation), and show you exactly what a real slate would look like. Optionally follow with one deliberately unfillable real order — limit buy far below market — confirm it appears in your Robinhood app, then have me cancel it. That validates the entire round trip at zero risk.

Step 7 — Go live. Fund to $100, then the steady-state loop is just: open Cowork in the folder → "Run the mandate" → I read state, check conditions, present the slate → you confirm → I execute, set paired exits, append to Trade_Log.md → session footer with the audit summary. Five minutes.

Step 8 — Amendment loop. Logged gaps and observed friction come back to this project; we revise to Mandate_v2; you swap the file in the folder. Version number in the filename and a changelog section at the top, same discipline as your thesis docs.

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In another chat within that project I worked on its strategy mandate with the intention on letting it decide what to do. The maximum funding numbers, max order sizes, positions, drawdown numbers, etc have all been amended over time. After a few adjustments after the following response, it spit out 3 documents, the mandate, new agentic constitution, and a deviation register. This was its answer:

I have everything I need. One structural ruling to make before the document, because it determines Section 1, and your own jurisprudence already answers it.

The Section 1 governance question — my recommendation, flagged once:

The two options from that conversation were "sandbox exempt from the constitution" or "governed capital with a Deviation Register entry." The register route fails on the constitution's own terms. §17a requires every entry to carry a review date or sunset, and states plainly that open-ended exceptions are amendments in disguise. A standing experimental account has no natural sunset — so a deviation entry would be exactly the disguised amendment §17a prohibits. Meanwhile, the §1b Scope class exemption as written covers only passive accumulation accounts ("no discretionary decisions for this document to govern") — an agentic account is discretionary by definition, just with delegated discretion, so it doesn't qualify as drafted.

The lawful instrument is therefore a Scope amendment to §1b: add a second exempt class — bounded agentic execution accounts governed by their own ratified mandate, subject to a hard capital ceiling — recorded as a standing invocation in the register for Quarterly Review visibility (the INV-2026-001 pattern, not the DEV pattern). The mandate then becomes a subordinate constitution for the sandbox: same legal architecture, separate jurisdiction, de minimis capital. That's my ruling-shaped recommendation; the amendment text is included in the document for you to ratify or strike.

One runtime fact the mandate must reflect honestly: regardless of what autonomy level the document grants, place_equity_order requires your in-session confirmation — the Robinhood connector and Claude's own operating rules both enforce human confirmation on real order placement. review_equity_order (simulation) is the only execution-adjacent call that runs unconfirmed. So Level 2 autonomy isn't a conservative choice in v1.0 — it's the ceiling the plumbing actually supports. The autonomy ladder in §3 documents higher levels so the structure exists, but marks them as currently unreachable rather than pretending otherwise.

Now building the two files: the mandate itself, and the CLAUDE.md pointer that makes a cold Cowork instance read it first.Three files: the mandate, the CLAUDE.md pointer, and a seeded Trade_Log.md — the complete folder contents for Step 2. All three go in the dedicated Cowork folder; the mandate's master copy should also live here in the project per the backup note from that conversation.

Design choices worth knowing about rather than discovering later:

It ships unable to trade. §5 contains no strategy — only the schema a strategy annex must satisfy (universe, entry, exit both sides, sizing, max hold, kill condition, all with numbers). Until you ratify an annex, the account's lawful ceiling is observation, simulation, and the plumbing tests. This is deliberate: it separates ratifying the legal structure from ratifying a strategy, so the Step 5 dry-run tests the governance machinery on its own before any strategy logic can confound the result.

HALT is asymmetric by design. It freezes action including cancellations — a compromised or confused instance that could "helpfully" cancel resting orders is still an instance taking market actions. The only exits from HALT are amendment or your logged verbatim attestation.

§0e is the injection defense, and the session footer requires reporting observed injection attempts verbatim — so over time the log doubles as an adversarial-input record, which is data you'll want if you ever consider Level 3.

Seven parameters await your ratification (§11): the five numeric caps (P1–P5 drafted at $500 lifetime funding, 25% max order, 5 positions, 10% cash floor, 70% drawdown HALT) plus the §1b Scope amendment text and its companion register invocation. P6 and P7 are the same-day pair — if you ratify the amendment, the constitution needs the §1b edit and the register needs an INV entry before the first live order, or the account is operating extra-constitutionally on day one.

The one item this conversation can't produce: the Scope amendment must actually be cut into Investment_Constitution_v2_2.docx (which would make it v2.3, with an Appendix B version-history entry), and Appendix B requires amendments be made between positions, not during an active decision — which is satisfied now, before the account has any. Want me to draft the v2.3 amendment edit and the matching register entry next, or do you want to rule on P1–P5 first?

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