Concepts
Understand Market Lab's core terms and boundaries.
Core Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Provider | A service that routes data, such as MMT |
| Exchange | The market-data exchange selected with --exchange |
| Venue | The live execution destination selected with --venue or a Python request |
| Source | Raw market data such as candles, trades, or an orderbook |
| Study | A calculation over market data |
| Strategy | A built-in algorithm that executes a side and amount you chose |
| Bot | An autonomous trading system that makes its own quoting decisions |
| Script | Custom Python or JavaScript logic |
| Job | A deployed strategy, bot, or script |
| Daemon | mlabd, the supervisor that keeps live jobs and order state running |
Data and Execution Are Separate
A script can read one exchange and execute on another:
Binance data -> your script -> mlabd -> Hyperliquid executionReading public market data never enables trading. Live execution requires an explicit venue or exchange request and a configured credential.
Strategy, Bot, or Script
- Use a strategy when you already know the side and amount but want Market Lab to schedule the order.
- Use a bot when the system should decide what to quote as the market changes.
- Use a script when you need custom logic.
Symbols
Perpetual markets use the base asset, such as BTC. Spot markets use the exact pair, such as HYPE/USDC. Outcome markets use <outcome-id>:<side>, such as 1009:0.
See Markets.
Time
CLI ranges use UTC dates or date-times:
--from 2026-07-15
--to "2026-07-15 16:00:00"Date-only values mean midnight UTC. Data records may still expose millisecond fields such as t or ts_ms; Market Lab converts provider-specific units internally.
Output
terminal: human-readable outputjson: one machine-readable resultjsonl: stream of machine-readable events
See JSON Output.