What is vcp-screener?

A stock screener for finding the Volatility Contraction Pattern, or VCP, in S&P 500 shares. VCP is a technical-analysis setup where price swings become tighter during an upward trend near a possible breakout level.

Use it to scan the S&P 500 or a custom list for Stage 2 uptrends, tight bases, contracting volatility, and possible breakout candidates.

It narrows a large stock list to shares matching this specific chart pattern. It removes the need to inspect every candidate manually for tightening price movement and breakout areas.

vcp-screener — Skill for Claude Code by mphinance/alpha-skills

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add mphinance/alpha-skills --skill vcp-screener

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mphinance/alpha-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install quant-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 60 skills.

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/skills/mphinance/alpha-skills/vcp-screener/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mphinance/alpha-skills/vcp-screener)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mphinance/alpha-skills/vcp-screener"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mphinance/alpha-skills/vcp-screener/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/skills/mphinance/alpha-skills/vcp-screener"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mphinance/alpha-skills/vcp-screener.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 77 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,462 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin 86% copy Near-identical to another mod 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	$0.00077	$0.01462
Opus 5.5	$0.00031	$0.00585
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00015	$0.00292
Haiku 4.5	$0.00008	$0.00146

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 69fe6ab04aba, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

vcp-screener scanned grade A with 0 findings 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 15 executable files (scripts/calculators/__init__.py, scripts/calculators/execution_state.py, scripts/calculators/pattern_classifier.py, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

86% identical to vcp-screener — 50 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

plugins/quant-skills/skills/vcp-screener/SKILL.md · 125 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 125 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

VCP Screener - Minervini Volatility Contraction Pattern

Screen S&P 500 stocks for Mark Minervini's Volatility Contraction Pattern (VCP), identifying Stage 2 uptrend stocks with contracting volatility near breakout pivot points.

When to Use

User asks for VCP screening or Minervini-style setups
User wants to find tight base / volatility contraction patterns
User requests Stage 2 momentum stock scanning
User asks for breakout candidates with defined risk

Prerequisites

FMP API key (set FMP_API_KEY environment variable or pass --api-key)
Free tier (250 calls/day) is sufficient for default screening (top 100 candidates)
Paid tier recommended for full S&P 500 screening (--full-sp500)

Workflow

Step 1: Prepare and Execute Screening

Run the VCP screener script:

# Default: S&P 500, top 100 candidates
python3 skills/vcp-screener/scripts/screen_vcp.py --output-dir skills/vcp-screener/scripts

# Custom universe
python3 skills/vcp-screener/scripts/screen_vcp.py --universe AAPL NVDA MSFT AMZN META --output-dir skills/vcp-screener/scripts

# Full S&P 500 (paid API tier)
python3 skills/vcp-screener/scripts/screen_vcp.py --full-sp500 --output-dir skills/vcp-screener/scripts

Strict Mode (Minervini pure setup)

Only return stocks with valid_vcp=True AND execution_state in (Pre-breakout, Breakout):

python3 skills/vcp-screener/scripts/screen_vcp.py --strict --output-dir reports/

Advanced Tuning (for backtesting)

Adjust VCP detection parameters for research and backtesting:

python3 skills/vcp-screener/scripts/screen_vcp.py \
  --min-contractions 3 \
  --t1-depth-min 12.0 \
  --breakout-volume-ratio 2.0 \
  --trend-min-score 90 \
  --atr-multiplier 1.5 \
  --output-dir reports/

Parameter	Default	Range	Effect
`--min-contractions`	2	2-4	Higher = fewer but higher-quality patterns
`--t1-depth-min`	10.0%	1-50	Higher = excludes shallow first corrections
`--breakout-volume-ratio`	1.5x	0.5-10	Higher = stricter volume confirmation
`--trend-min-score`	85	0-100	Higher = stricter Stage 2 filter
`--atr-multiplier`	1.5	0.5-5	Lower = more sensitive swing detection
`--contraction-ratio`	0.70	0.1-1	Lower = requires tighter contractions
`--min-contraction-days`	5	1-30	Higher = longer minimum contraction
`--lookback-days`	120	30-365	Longer = finds older patterns
`--max-sma200-extension`	50.0%	—	SMA200 distance threshold for Overextended state and penalty
`--wide-and-loose-threshold`	15.0%	—	Final contraction depth above which wide-and-loose flag triggers
`--strict`	off	—	Minervini strict mode: only Pre-breakout or Breakout with valid VCP

Read the full file on GitHub · 125 lines

Files

What ships with it

19 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 125 lines · 77 tokens per session scan A 69fe6ab04aba

Subscribe to this mod's changes

vcp-screener is a skill published in the GitHub repository mphinance/alpha-skills (28 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 77 tokens to every session and 1,462 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 86% identical to vcp-screener, differing in 50 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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