What is kraken-cli CLAUDE.md?

A guide for using kraken-cli, a command-line program for trading crypto, stocks, foreign exchange, and derivatives through Kraken. It explains commands, authentication, JSON output, and the paper mode used for practice trades.

Reading market data, invoking trading commands as subprocesses, configuring API credentials, handling JSON results, and testing with paper trading before using real funds.

It helps agents interact with the trading tool consistently while highlighting that some commands can place real financial orders.

How krakenfx/kraken-cli configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to krakenfx/kraken-cli. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/krakenfx/kraken-cli/main/CLAUDE.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/krakenfx/kraken-cli

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/krakenfx/kraken-cli/claude-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/krakenfx/kraken-cli/claude-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/krakenfx/kraken-cli/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/krakenfx/kraken-cli/claude-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/krakenfx/kraken-cli/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/krakenfx/kraken-cli/claude-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 1,521 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 1,521 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan B 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.01521	$0.01521
Opus 5.5	$0.00608	$0.00608
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00304	$0.00304
Haiku 4.5	$0.00152	$0.00152

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 724bf7530244, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

kraken-cli CLAUDE.md scanned grade B with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Unrestricted tool accessmediumExcessive agency

A wildcard tool grant or "run any command" leaves no least-privilege boundary at all.

1. Never execute any command marked `dangerous` without explicit user confirmation. The `dangerous` field in `agents/tool-catalog.json` is the authoritative list (41 commands). Four of them (`order buy/sell/cancel/cancel

CLAUDE.md · 150 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 150 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLAUDE.md

This is experimental software. Commands execute real financial transactions. Test with kraken paper (spot) or kraken futures paper (futures) before real funds. See DISCLAIMER.md.

Integration guidance for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and other Anthropic-powered agents interacting with kraken-cli.

Fast entry points:

Runtime context: CONTEXT.md
Full command contract: agents/tool-catalog.json

What is kraken-cli?

A command-line interface for trading crypto, stocks, forex, and derivatives on Kraken. Every command returns structured JSON. Designed for AI agents and automated pipelines.

Invocation

Call kraken as a subprocess. Always use -o json and redirect stderr:

kraken <command> [args...] -o json 2>/dev/null

Authentication

Set environment variables before invoking:

export KRAKEN_API_KEY="your-key"
export KRAKEN_API_SECRET="your-secret"

Public market data commands (ticker, orderbook, ohlc, trades, spreads, status) require no credentials.

Key Conventions

stdout is valid JSON on success (exit 0), or a JSON error envelope on runtime failure (exit 1).
The error field in error envelopes is a stable category code: api, auth, network, rate_limit, validation, config, websocket, io, timeout, parse.
WebSocket commands emit JSONL (one JSON object per line).
Paper trading commands (kraken paper ... for spot, kraken futures paper ... for futures) use live prices but no real money. No auth needed.
Exit code 0 = success, 1 = runtime failure (JSON envelope on stdout), 2 = argument/usage error from the parser. With -o json, exit 2 puts a {"error":"validation"} envelope on stdout (stderr stays empty); without it, clap's usage text goes to stderr. Validate argument values against the values arrays in agents/tool-catalog.json before invoking.

Safety Rules

Never execute any command marked dangerous without explicit user confirmation. The dangerous field in agents/tool-catalog.json is the authoritative list (41 commands). Four of them (order buy/sell/cancel/cancel-all) also carry paper_safe: true: inside a paper workspace they execute simulated fills and need no confirmation.
Use --validate flag to dry-run order commands before submitting.
Use kraken paper (spot) or kraken futures paper (futures) commands for testing strategies safely.
Gate all order placement, cancellation, withdrawal, transfer, and staking operations behind user approval.
Never log or display API secrets.

Read the full file on GitHub · 150 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

1mo ago First seen · 150 lines · 1,521 tokens per session scan B 724bf7530244

Subscribe to this mod's changes

kraken-cli CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository krakenfx/kraken-cli (781 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 1,521 tokens to every session, about $0.0061 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (unrestricted tool access). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Finance and fintech

vscode buildNext.instructions.md

Working notes and architecture documentation for the new esbuild-based build system in build/next. Use when making changes to the new build pipeline (transpile/bundle commands, NLS plugin, source-map handling, resource copying, or self-hosting watch tasks).

microsoft/vscode · 9,715 tokens

kraken-cli: Instructions file for Claude Code