https://reddit.com/link/1tpmdu3/video/zpm96syzlr3h1/player
I trade short-dated options off the **underlying equity** — entering at important buyer/seller levels, at confluences, at the levels I'd take on the stock anyway.
What kept frustrating me: no platform actually lets you do that. I'm looking at SPY at 740, I know exactly where I'm wrong and exactly where I'll take profit — and then I have to tab over to my broker, pull up the option chain, find the ATM strike, pick the DTE, do contract math, set my stop in option premium dollars instead of the SPY level I actually understand. Seven clicks for one trade.
And then have HFTs predate on my stop with one of those long, infamous wicks.
So I built my own trading platform. Runs **100% locally**, connects to any broker with API access. (Right now alpaca and Tradier supported but easy to extend for others too)
[https://github.com/calesthio/OptionsCanvas](https://github.com/calesthio/OptionsCanvas)
What I use it for:
* **Enter, SL, TP — all set in underlying price on the chart**. The platform picks the contract for me.
* **My SL and TP live on my machine**, not in the broker's order book. When my level actually breaks, the platform fires a market order to the broker.
* **Drag** SL and TP directly on the chart to set them. Drag again to move them on a live position. No order ticket, no modal hell.
* **Hotkeys for speed of execution.**
I've open-sourced it. I'm hoping this turns into something genuinely useful via community PRs and feature discussions.
A few honest callouts:
1. This is solo dev work. I'm a Senior Software Engineer at a FAANG — every design decision so far reflects *my* workflow. So might not 100% solve your use case.
2. There will be feature gaps and bugs. Please open issues.
3. I have a full-time job and maintain a few other popular repos I open-sourced this year, so I might not respond at OSS-maintainer pace — but I will engage.