Desktop: Connect Your Broker

Read this first, because it's the thing people get backwards: you do not need to connect a broker to see live data. Sign in on Pro and the live order-flow view streams immediately — the DOM ladder, footprint, cumulative delta, pull/stack, and the tape on the major futures complex (ES, NQ, and the rest of the majors). It is part of your subscription, not something you wire up. Free is capped at delayed futures bars.

You connect your own broker only when you want something that is genuinely tied to your own account: broker-direct depth under your own entitlements (for example full equity Level-2), or your account's own positions and orders. When you do, that L1/L2 streams directly from your broker to your machine — it is not relayed through Sharpnel, repackaged, or resold. Your data agreement stays between you and your broker; Sharpnel never sees your credentials and never sits between you and your feed.

• Futures order flow, out of the box: the live DOM, footprint, and tape on the major futures complex are included with Pro — nothing to connect, nothing to wire up.
• Free public crypto depth: one connector streams public crypto Level-2 depth with no account and no API key at all — useful for trying the DOM before you wire up a real account.
• Bring your own broker (optional): connect any supported broker for broker-direct depth and your account's positions and orders — see the full connector list with live status below. Deep equity Level-2 requires the matching depth subscription on your broker account; the terminal reads what your account is entitled to, nothing more.

Connect any of these from the Broker menu → Connections... (Ctrl+B). The badges below are the honest state of each connector — anything marked In certification or Not supported yet cannot be connected today. Don't see yours? Request it — new connectors are prioritized by subscriber demand.

Broker-account connectors — real-time depth and live execution — are part of Pro; the public crypto depth feed is free. Whatever you connect, your data agreement stays between you and your broker (see Bring your own data above).

Everything lives in one place: the Broker menu → Connections..., or Ctrl+B. Pick a connector from the dropdown at the top; the dialog shows a live status card on the left (a connection LED plus a LIVE / RECONNECTING / OFFLINE pill) and the credential editor for that connector on the right.

Non-secret fields — account ID, gateway address, symbols, venue choices — are remembered from your last successful connect, so you stop retyping them every launch. Secrets are never part of that: see below.

• Secrets go in your OS keychain, or nowhere. API secrets, tokens, and passwords are stored in your operating system's keychain on your machine — and some connectors don't store credentials at all, using them only to authenticate the session. They are only ever sent to your broker; they never touch Sharpnel servers.
• Gateway-based connectors never see your login. Where a broker uses a local sign-in gateway, you log in with the broker directly — nothing is entered or stored in Sharpnel.
• Read + trade scope only. For API-key venues, create the key with read and trade permissions only — never enable withdrawals. The dialog reminds you of this on every page where it applies.
• Practice modes default on. Connectors that offer a paper, practice, or demo environment start with it selected — you opt into the live environment, not out of it.
• The dialog tells you which account you're about to stream. Where the account format reveals it, a chip under the account field reads PAPER ACCOUNT in muted grey or LIVE ACCOUNT in loud amber, before you ever press Connect.

Once a connector goes live, your depth streams straight into the DOM ladder. The DOM draws real depth only — until a feed is connected it shows an explicit empty state rather than a fabricated book, and the status LED tells you which feed it's waiting on.

• Open as many ladders as you trade: Add Panel → Order Flow → DOM V2 (Ctrl+Alt+D) opens the DOM, and every press after the first adds a new, independent ladder pinned to its own symbol.
• Some connectors also light up live options chains — strikes, greeks, and implied volatility — from your own account.
• Connection state stays visible after the dialog closes: each feed's LED is tracked in the shell, so a dropped session never fails silently.

The ladder is built so the dangerous click is hard to make and the safe click is cheap. These are the defaults, in the order they protect you:

• On the ladder: working orders appear as chips pinned to their price rows — click a chip to pull that order. Your position shows as a rail at the average entry price with live P&L beside it.
• On the chart: the same working orders and position draw as price lines on the chart for the symbol, so the chart and the ladder never disagree about what you have on.
• Positions panel: Add Panel → Trading → Positions (Ctrl+Shift+P) — every fill updates it.
• Orders panel: Add Panel → Trading → Orders (Ctrl+Alt+U) — the blotter for broker-routed orders.
• Everywhere else it matters: every fill lands in the trade journal automatically, posts a status-bar message and a toast, and plays the fill sound — a paper stop-out gets its own, louder one.

• The DOM Ladder — the full ladder reference: layout, chips, and order-flow columns.
• Getting Started — first launch, signing in, and your first workspace.
• Desktop Terminal — what the desktop is and what's included with Pro.