How Unisona works

What Unisona is

Unisona is an AI assistant that remembers your work, and a stock-market terminal, in one place. You talk to it in plain English; it can look things up, read and write documents, and — if you want — watch the market with you.

Two things make it unusual, and both are worth understanding before you start:

• It keeps its memory on your side. Your chats, notes and watchlist are stored as plain files rather than locked inside someone else's product. You can run the whole thing on your own computer if you'd rather.
• It isn't tied to one AI model. Unisona is a system that uses AI models, not a wrapper around a single one. Which model answers you is a setting you control, and swapping it doesn't cost you your history.

What it does

Four surfaces. You can use any one of them and ignore the rest.

Getting started

1. Make an account

Go to the sign-in page and either continue with Google or create an account with an email address and password. You'll get a confirmation email — click the link in it to prove the address is yours. That verification matters later: Unisona will only email you alerts at an address you've confirmed.

2. Pick a plan (you can start free)

There are three, and the free one is a real product rather than a trial.

Current plans and exact wording live on the pricing page — that page is the authority if anything here drifts.

3. Your first five minutes

1. Open Chat and ask it something real — "explain what a stock index is", or "summarise this document" with a file attached. That's the whole interface; there's nothing to configure.
2. Open Trader. You'll see a chart in the middle and a list of symbols on the left. Click any symbol to load its chart.
3. Add something you care about: + Add symbol at the top of the left rail, type a ticker (say AAPL), pick it from the results.
4. Go back to Chat and ask "what's on my watchlist, and does anything look weak today?" It already knows your list — you don't have to tell it.

Using the chat

Type in the box at the bottom and press Enter. That's it. A few things worth knowing:

It can actually do things, not just talk

When it needs information it doesn't have, it uses a tool — a real action, like searching the web, reading a file you uploaded, fetching a live stock price, or checking your watchlist. You'll see a small marker in the reply (for example 🔧 trader_watchlist) telling you which tool ran. That marker is your receipt: it means the answer came from looking something up, not from memory.

It knows your market setup

If you ask anything about trading, the assistant already has your watchlist, current prices, and the trading engine's own read on each symbol. Ask "should I be worried about SMH?" and it will reason from the same numbers the terminal is showing you, and tell you when its figures were taken.

It will not place orders. Ask it to buy something and it will decline and point you at the trader. Deciding to trade is yours; the assistant's job is to help you think.

Getting better answers

• Say what you want to end up with. "Explain X to someone who's never traded" beats "explain X".
• Give it the material. Upload the file, paste the error, name the ticker.
• Push back. If an answer is too vague or too technical, say so — it will adjust.
• Ask it where something came from. A good answer can tell you.

Choosing which AI answers

The picker above the message box switches models. Different models have different strengths and speeds; your conversation carries across when you switch. On Pro you can also add your own provider keys — see API keys.

Using the trader

The layout

• Left rail — your watchlist, and behind the second tab, your alerts.
• Middle — the chart or charts. The dropdown in the toolbar chooses how many you see at once.
• Right — the order ticket, where a trade is actually placed.
• Bottom — your positions, orders, order history, and the journal.

Reading the chart

The default view is a candlestick chart. Each candle covers one slice of time (five minutes by default — change it with the timeframe dropdown). One candle tells you four things at once:

• The thick body spans the open and close — where price started and ended in that slice.
• The thin lines above and below (the wicks) reach the high and low.
• Colour tells you direction: closed higher than it opened, or lower.
• The bars along the bottom are volume — how many shares changed hands. Big volume means a lot of people acted; it makes a move more meaningful.

Price runs up the right edge, time along the bottom. Hover anywhere to read the exact values under your cursor.

The watchlist

+ Add symbol to add, the ✕ on a row to remove, and drag rows to reorder. Click a symbol to make it the active one — the chart, the details panel underneath, and the order ticket all follow. Your list is saved to your account, so it's there on your phone too.

Alerts Pro

Switch the left rail to Alerts. Press + New alert and choose:

• A signal fires — the engine's own read on that symbol turns bullish or bearish.
• Price reaches a zone — price comes within a set percentage of a support or resistance level (see the glossary).
• Washout confirmed — the engine's stricter "this setup is real" verdict.

Stay quiet for is how long an alert waits before it's allowed to fire again, so one jumpy morning doesn't send you thirty messages. Leave Email me when it fires ticked and you'll get an email as well as an on-screen notice; untick it for on-screen only. You can pause an alert with its checkbox or delete it with the ✕.

Paper versus live — the important distinction

The badge in the toolbar always tells you which mode you're in. Check it before you press anything. Paper trading is genuinely useful — the mechanics are identical, so you can learn every button without a single dollar at risk.

What the autopilot does and doesn't decide

Unisona has a scanning engine that reviews your watchlist about once a minute and forms a view on each symbol: a direction, a confidence, the levels it thinks matter, and a suggested stop and target. On Free and Pro, that is all it does — it shows you what it sees, and every order is placed by you.

The autonomous trader, which acts on those signals by itself, is a Pilot-plan feature and is off unless you deliberately turn it on. Even then it works only through a broker account you connected yourself.

Connecting a broker

A broker (or brokerage) is the licensed company that actually holds your money and executes your trades — Unisona never does. To place a real order you connect an account you already have. Two are supported.

Before you start

• You need an account with the broker already open. That's their signup, not ours.
• Start with a paper account at the broker. Both options below offer one free.
• Everything happens in Settings → Connections.

Alpaca (simplest — paper only)

Alpaca is an online broker with a good practice mode. Unisona connects to Alpaca paper accounts only, which makes it the safest place to start.

1. Sign up at alpaca.markets and sign in.
2. Switch to Paper Trading (there's a toggle — make sure you're not in the live account).
3. Find API Keys and generate a new key. You'll be shown two strings: a key ID and a secret key.
4. Copy the secret immediately. Brokers show it once. If you lose it, delete the key and make a new one — that's normal and costs nothing.
5. Paste both into Settings → Connections → Alpaca, and save.

Interactive Brokers (IBKR — paper or live)

IBKR is a large traditional broker. Unisona supports both its paper and live accounts, which means it's also the one where a mistake can cost real money. Use its paper account until you're comfortable.

1. In Settings → Connections, choose IBKR and follow the steps shown there — the exact flow depends on how your IBKR account is set up, so the page walks you through the current one rather than us printing a version here that goes stale.
2. Choose the paper account when asked, unless you have specifically decided otherwise.
3. Confirm the account number shown in Unisona matches the one you intended. A paper account number looks different from a live one — check it.

Disconnecting

The same Settings page removes stored keys. Do that if you stop using Unisona, if you think a key leaked, or any time you're unsure — reconnecting takes two minutes.

API keys, explained

If you've never used one: an API key is a long random string that acts as a password for programs instead of people. When you give Unisona a key for another service, you're saying "this app may act as me over there".

Where they show up here

• Broker keys — let Unisona read your positions and place the orders you ask for.
• AI provider keys Pro — let you use your own account with an AI company, billed to you directly, instead of Unisona's.

Neither is required to start. You can use the chat and the paper trader without ever entering a key.

Treat them like passwords, because they are

• Don't paste a key into a chat message, a screenshot, a support email, or a public issue — including into Unisona's own chat box.
• Use a paper/read-only key when the service offers one.
• If a key might have leaked, revoke it at the provider. Revoking is instant and free; recovering a drained account is neither.
• Rotate them occasionally — delete the old, create a new, paste it in.

What Unisona does with them

Keys are stored encrypted, scoped to your account, and used only to make the requests you asked for. They're never shown back to you in full, and they're never sent to an AI model. Deleting a connection deletes the stored key.

Trading words, in plain English

Ticker (symbol)

The short code for something you can trade. AAPL is Apple.

Share

One unit of ownership in a company.

ETF

A single ticker that holds a basket of many things. SPY tracks the 500 largest US companies, so buying it spreads your money across all of them.

Position

Something you currently own. "A position in AAPL" means you hold some Apple.

Order

An instruction to buy or sell. A market order says "now, at whatever the price is". A limit order says "only at this price or better" — it may never fill.

Fill

An order actually being executed.

P&L

Profit and loss. Unrealised is on paper while you still hold it; realised is locked in once you've sold.

Day P&L

How much you're up or down today specifically.

Stop (stop-loss)

A price at which you've decided to sell to cap a loss. Deciding it before you buy is the single most useful habit in this list.

Target

The price at which you plan to take a profit.

Support

A price level where buyers have repeatedly stepped in — a floor price has bounced off before.

Resistance

The opposite: a level where selling has repeatedly appeared, a ceiling.

Volume

How much was traded. High volume means a move had real participation.

Volatility

How much price jumps around. High volatility means bigger moves in both directions.

VIX

A widely-watched measure of expected volatility in the US market. Low is calm, high is fearful.

Extended hours

Trading before the market opens or after it closes. Fewer people are trading, so prices move more erratically.

Paper trading

Practice with simulated money and real prices.

Long / short

Long is owning something, hoping it rises. Short is betting it falls — riskier, because a rise has no ceiling.

Drawdown

How far an account has fallen from its highest point. The number that tells you what a strategy actually felt like to live through.

If something goes wrong

The chart is empty or the prices look stale.

Markets close. Outside trading hours you're seeing the last prices from the previous session, which is expected — the toolbar shows whether the session is open. If it's mid-session and still stale, reload the page.

I signed in but the trader sends me to the Watch page.

The full terminal is a Pro feature. Watch is the free version — real charts, watchlist and news. Pricing has the details.

My alert didn't email me.

Check, in order: is the alert enabled (the checkbox)?; is Email me when it fires ticked on that alert?; is your email address confirmed?; and has its quiet window elapsed? Alerts only go to verified addresses. Also check your spam folder once and mark it "not spam" so later ones arrive.

I connected my broker but positions are empty.

Usually one of three things: the connection is to a paper account with nothing in it, the keys were pasted with a stray space, or the broker takes a few minutes to activate a brand-new key. Re-check the account number shown in Settings against the one you meant.

The assistant won't place a trade for me.

That's deliberate and can't be turned off. It can research, explain and analyse; placing orders is done by you in the trader.

An answer looks wrong.

Say so in the chat and ask where the number came from. If a tool marker (🔧) is shown, the figure came from a live lookup; if not, treat it more carefully. You can also report it with the camera button in the header, which attaches a screenshot.

Something else.

The FAQ covers accounts, privacy, pricing and self-hosting. The reference library below has the technical documentation.