Signal → Thesis → Execution

Short answer: Signal → Thesis → Execution is the trading loop that maps to a coding agent’s Explore → Plan → Implement. A signal is not a trade. A thesis is not a vibe. Execution is not “the bot fired.” Questflow’s financial harness is built to keep those three stages separate and reviewable.

The three stages

Signal. Something changed: funding, a probability, a wallet, a level, a manager action. Signals are cheap. Acting on every signal is how accounts die.

Thesis. Why this matters, what you will do if it continues, what proves it wrong, how large, how long. This is judgment. On Questflow it comes from a fund manager’s distilled framework, not from a one-line prompt.

Execution. Venue, size, order type, permissions, kill switch. Deterministic hooks fire here — like a coding agent’s hooks before rm -rf. Afterward: verification (slippage, fill, did the thesis still hold).

Why chat UIs skip the middle

Most “AI trading” products jump from signal to ticket. Missing thesis is how you get revenge trades with a friendly UI. A harness should refuse to execute without an explicit thesis and invalidation — or at least surface that they are missing.

Where Funds fit

A Fund is a packaged thesis machine: the manager’s loop, running as an AI Agent, that you can follow with your own execution constraints.

Related: What is an agentic trading harness? · What is invest.md?

Nothing here is financial advice.