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Alpaca

  • 17 installs
  • 21 repo stars
  • Updated August 3, 2026
  • starchild-ai-agent/official-skills

Helps with ai & agent building tasks during AI-assisted development.

About

alpaca is a Claude Code skill for ai & agent building. It helps solo builders move faster with AI-assisted coding.

  • alpaca
  • AI & Agent Building
  • AI-coding skill

Alpaca by the numbers

  • 17 all-time installs (skills.sh)
  • +5 installs in the week ending Aug 5, 2026 (Skillselion tracking)
  • Ranked #10,886 of 16,546 AI & Agent Building skills by installs in the Skillselion catalog
  • Data as of Aug 5, 2026 (Skillselion catalog sync)
npx skills add https://github.com/starchild-ai-agent/official-skills --skill alpaca

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Listed on Skillselion
Installs17
repo stars21
Last updatedAugust 3, 2026
Repositorystarchild-ai-agent/official-skills

What it does

Helps with ai & agent building tasks during AI-assisted development.

Files

SKILL.mdMarkdownGitHub ↗

What this is

☁️ Cloud broker — Alpaca exposes a public REST API, so this runs directly in the Starchild container, no local gateway needed. US equities and ETFs.

Paper and live are fully separated: different key pairs, different hosts (paper-api.alpaca.markets vs api.alpaca.markets). A paper key physically cannot touch the live account. Live order placement additionally requires the --confirm-live flag.

Get your API keys

1. Sign up at alpaca.markets (US brokerage; paper trading is free and needs no funding). 2. Paper keys: log in → switch to Paper Trading (toggle top-left) → Home → "API Keys" panel → Generate New Keys. Copy the Key ID and Secret Key (secret shown once). 3. Live keys (optional, real money): switch to Live Trading → same API Keys panel → generate. These are a different pair from paper. 4. Market data: the free IEX feed works out of the box. SIP (full-market) needs a paid data subscription.

Configure (.env)

Request via secure input — never paste keys in chat. Variables:

VariableRequiredNotes
ALPACA_API_KEYyes (paper)paper Key ID
ALPACA_SECRET_KEYyes (paper)paper Secret
ALPACA_LIVE_API_KEYonly for livelive Key ID
ALPACA_LIVE_SECRET_KEYonly for livelive Secret
ALPACA_FEEDnoiex (default) or sip

Usage

pip install alpaca-py (first run). All commands print JSON. Default profile is paper.

python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py status
python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py account
python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py positions
python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py orders [--executions]
python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py quote --symbol AAPL
python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py history --symbol AAPL --period 1d --limit 90
# place (paper): qty OR notional, market OR limit
python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py place --symbol AAPL --side buy --qty 1 --type market
python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py place --symbol AAPL --side buy --notional 500 --type limit --limit-price 180
python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py cancel --order-id <id>
# live: must add --profile live AND --confirm-live
python skills/alpaca/scripts/alpaca_cli.py --profile live --confirm-live place --symbol AAPL --side buy --qty 1

Periods: 1m 5m 15m 30m 1h 1d 1w 1M. Alpaca supports fractional --notional (dollar amount) orders.

Gotchas

  • status is the health check — it reports SDK install state, key presence, and pings the account. Run it first.
  • Free IEX data can be sparse/delayed off-hours; use sip only if the account has the paid feed.
  • Live trading is real money. The --confirm-live gate is intentional; never auto-add it.

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