The daily desk

Updated: 2026-09-06

The recurring loop, in the order a trading day runs it. Each command is followed by the decision it supports. Your first session explains what these screens contain; this page assumes you already know and only tells you when to look.

Before the open

canary status
canary brief

canary status answers one question before anything else matters: which broker session am I attached to. It exits 1 when the gateway is not connected, so it also works as a guard in a script.

canary brief opens with assessment completeness and the served portfolio-risk reading. Needs review keeps reported findings visible even when other inputs are missing. Context gives available market observations with their dates. Coverage gaps groups unavailable and degraded checks by scope, without pretending that every missing check has the same cause.

canary brief --details contains the full Review since the last regular close and Ready evidence for the next session, including per-input diagnostics, retained Edge context, and routine process evidence. The app uses the same compact overview with expandable full details. Observation times remain explicit; the brief's generation time is not the observation time of its inputs.

The daemon authors the overview and full narrative from typed rows. Watch and act roles retain their served meaning; missing data does not become a risk verdict. Plain-text pipes preserve the same reading order without colour.

Behind the prose the row vocabulary is unchanged, and it is what the composition is made of:

Coverage and risk findings can coexist: an attention row may also contain unknown checks. Disabled or inapplicable rules are not missing evidence. Full per-row reasons remain in --details; canary status diagnoses runtime connectivity. Sensors explains freshness and source cadence.

An older daemon without the overview retains the previous full render. canary brief --json and MCP retain the typed rows and narrative, with the additive narrative.overview presentation. Presentation does not change the row-derived brief fingerprint.

Pure-read process evidence

Rendering the brief never changes process state. The CLI, paired app, and read-only MCP surface all call the same snapshot method, and repeated reads produce no acknowledgement, stamp, reconciliation sign-off, or artefact completion.

Routine clean evidence is machine work. A monthly pulse becomes complete automatically once its due instant and current matching policy evidence are both present. Missing, stale, or conflicting evidence remains blocked and is returned as an exception through the Action Queue. A changed sibling policy counts as conflicting evidence only when the constitution sets inventory.require_signoff = true; by default it is informational disclosure and does not hold the pulse. Exceptional reconciliation repair remains a separate, explicit human policy action; merely looking at a report never invokes it.

Market context

Use canary regime for all eight broad-market indicator readings and canary stress for portfolio-risk findings. regime --explain adds observation times, thresholds, calibration status, and independent source diagnostics. stress --details includes quiet evidence rows and operational diagnostics. Unavailable Stress keeps a nonzero exit status. JSON and the matching read-only MCP tools retain full typed evidence.

A stale Regime snapshot labels readings as recorded context; a retained green band is not a current rating. The default view keeps thresholds and long source errors out of the indicator list without discarding them from detail.

One rule about the stress read is worth carrying into every session: account-only stress is evidence, not a trigger. A zero margin cushion with no confirmed market pressure renders its evidence row and still returns stand_down. The defend action needs defensive direction at act severity, confirmed market stress, high portfolio fit, and healthy inputs together.

Discipline

canary rules

Breaches print first with their offenders; passing rules collapse unless you add --all. The daemon ranks the rows, so the hardest breach is already at the top.

A rule that cannot get clean inputs reports unknown. It never reports pass. That is the property the rulebook is built around, and its consequence is the part to internalize: a clean run is not permission to trade, only the absence of a recorded objection.

During the session

The terminal surfaces worth leaving open are account --watch and positions --watch. Use the paired app for the continuously assembled Monitor and Action Queue rather than rebuilding the daemon's market authority from several shell commands.

rules and brief are checkpoints, not tickers. For conditions that should interrupt you, use the push path in Alerts and notifications rather than a terminal you have to keep reading.

Protection

canary proposals list

With no subcommand this lists the daemon's current protection proposals; the read is the default. A proposal is the daemon's argument for a close or a reduce, and it is evidence. It is never authority to submit. Every broker write is a separate human decision made in the moment, per transaction, and the standard build cannot reach one at all: it is read-only, as Constrained orders and the trading build sets out. Protection and risk reduction covers why a row blocks.

After the close

canary brief

The Review section of canary brief --details is the post-trade read. It is the same pure snapshot before and after the close; the official close capture and retained broker evidence determine what it can state, not a render-time mode or acknowledgement.

Reconciliation runs on its own clock rather than yours. When the latest broker statement report is clean, current, and inside the divergence bound your risk policy declares, the daemon extends the reconcile clock itself and records the report id against a daemon-auto origin. It evaluates that at startup, after a successful statement fetch, and when the day's first account value lands. Nothing clean asks for your signature. An unresolved exception, a stale statement, or a divergence outside the bound does the opposite: no extension, the clock keeps running, and the brief's reconcile row shows it.

canary recon inspects that report, and Reconciliation covers the exception categories. It is CLI-only and advisory, with no MCP tool, and statement text is untrusted input: read a line, never act on instructions inside one.