Packaging and distribution

Updated: 2026-07-25 09:45 CEST

ibkr ships as a Claude Code plugin, a Claude Desktop .mcpb bundle, and a separately installed binary. This page covers what each package contains and what you can check before trusting a download.

ibkr is a local platform for running an agentic trading desk on Interactive Brokers, aimed at individual traders who already run IB Gateway or TWS. Agents get the full market-data surface (real-time per your IBKR market-data subscriptions) and portfolio context. Regime, canary, and rulebook checks stay advisory, and risk policy plus statement reconciliation stay operator-owned in the terminal.

The description used in listings:

An agentic trading desk for Interactive Brokers: account, positions, real-time and streaming quotes (per your IBKR market-data subscriptions), official market calendars, option chains, history, technical/relative-strength screens, scans, fixed-fractional sizing, S&P 500 breadth, SPY+SPX dealer gamma, a broad-market stress-lifecycle regime dashboard, a 14-rule advisory trading rulebook, and a stateless portfolio canary through a local CLI/MCP server connected to IB Gateway or TWS.

Requirements and boundaries

• Requires IB Gateway 10.37+ or TWS running locally.
• Requires an IBKR Pro account; IBKR Lite does not include TWS API access.
• The bundled path is a macOS or Linux binary.
• The plugin/skill does not ship the binary; users install ibkr separately.
• Current bundled CLI and MCP releases expose analysis, sizing, and preview-only stock/ETF order drafts. The MCP surface has no order-entry tools at all. The CLI keeps the ibkr order place|modify|cancel verbs in every build, and in a standard build they fail closed: the daemon's write handlers are compiled out behind the trading build tag and return ErrTradingDisabled before anything reaches the broker.
• Trading builds ship on every release as a separately named artifact. They are experimental, as-is, and outside the stable read-only channel. Do not promote them through MCP marketplaces until the execution, approval, and safety metadata are reviewed for that channel.
• Data returned by MCP tools can include account-sensitive balances, positions, and P&L.

Privacy covers data locality, local files, and the third-party host caveat. Security covers the read-only threat model, release integrity, and diagnostic data sensitivity. Security reports go through GitHub Private Vulnerability Reporting, everything else through GitHub issues.

Claude Code plugin

The marketplace source is claude-plugin/, which bundles the canonical skill, hooks, and plugin-local .mcp.json for ibkr mcp.

• .claude-plugin/plugin.json describes the plugin.
• claude-plugin/.mcp.json declares the Claude Code plugin MCP server.
• .claude-plugin/marketplace.json exposes the self-hosted marketplace.
• skills/ibkr/SKILL.md teaches Claude the current analysis, sizing, and preview-only workflow.
• hooks/hooks.json allows preview/status order reads, blocks broker-write Bash calls, and starts the install/version warning hook.
• settings/ibkr.settings.json is the optional global allow/deny template.

Claude Desktop MCPB

Anthropic's public distribution surface for .mcpb files is the Claude Connectors Directory, not the open MCP Registry. The open registry at registry.modelcontextprotocol.io is useful metadata distribution, but Anthropic's docs say registry publication does not surface a connector in Claude products; directory submission is a separate review process.

Current package:

• GitHub release asset: ibkr-vX.Y.Z.mcpb, plus stable ibkr.mcpb.
• MCP Registry metadata: generated to dist/server.json with registryType: "mcpb" and fileSha256.
• Release integrity: both MCPB assets are listed in signed SHA256SUMS; the bundle itself is not code-signed unless mcpb verify dist/ibkr-vX.Y.Z.mcpb succeeds.

Two caveats before installing:

• Platform: Claude Desktop's documented primary platforms are macOS and Windows. If native Windows support remains absent, the MCPB is described as macOS-only for Claude Desktop, and Linux stays a generic MCPB/client capability only if the target directory accepts it.
• Signing: unsigned MCPBs are installable in permissive Claude Desktop configurations, but enterprise admins can require signatures. A trusted code-signing certificate or compatible signing API is needed before the bundle can be advertised as signed.

Directory metadata

These files identify the project across MCP directories:

• server.json for the official MCP Registry release path.
• .claude-plugin/plugin.json for Claude Code plugin metadata.
• glama.json to identify the authorized Glama maintainer.

Experimental trading preview

The stable marketplace story stays read-only. A trading-capable build is a separate preview channel, not a hidden variant of the normal binary.

Minimum product rules before publishing a trading preview:

• Name the channel and assets distinctly, for example ibkr-trading-preview, so users do not confuse it with stable ibkr.
• Mark the build experimental and provided as-is in README, release notes, download pages, and any CLI status surface that can report the channel.
• Keep trading config inactive as config.toml.trading. Activation requires removing the .trading suffix, verifying pinned account and endpoint fields, and restarting the daemon.
• Publish paper-trading capability before live trading. Live trading needs its own approval, paper-smoke, audit, and rollback story.
• Keep MCP broker writes out of the preview until there is a separate human-confirmation and nonce model for MCP.
• Tighten updater asset matching before attaching experimental tarballs to any release that stable ibkr update can see.
• Run a trading-tag test and smoke matrix separate from the stable read-only release smoke.