Setting Up a New Bot Through Relay's Guided Flow

RelayDesk's Bot Builder is powerful, and with that power comes a lot of configuration options. For new bots, or for traders who are less familiar with a particular strategy type, starting from a full parameter page can be overwhelming. It's easy to set something and not fully understand what it does, or to miss a setting that matters.

Relay's New Bot Setup mode offers a different path. Instead of presenting all settings at once, it walks you through bot configuration as a conversation — asking questions in a logical sequence, explaining what each setting does, validating your inputs as you go, and helping you understand what you're building before you commit.

This guide walks through how the flow works and what to expect at each stage.

Why use Relay for bot setup vs the bot builder directly

Both paths end up in the same place, a configured bot in RelayDesk. The difference is in the experience:

Bot Builder is best when you already know what you want. You know your symbol, your strategy, your exact stop and TP levels, and you just want to get them entered quickly. The All Sections mode in particular is efficient for experienced users making targeted changes.

Relay's New Bot Setup is best when:

• You're new to a strategy type and want guidance on what each parameter does
• You're experimenting with a new symbol and want to think through the configuration step by step
• You want a second perspective on whether a configuration makes sense before going live
• You've had conversations with Relay about your existing bots and want to configure a new one informed by those insights

The two approaches complement each other. Many traders use Relay to work through the thinking, then make the final configuration adjustments directly in the Bot Builder.

Starting New Bot Setup

From the capability grid: Click "New Bot Setup" from the Relay capability menu.

Through conversation:

"Help me set up a new bot." "I want to create a new QQQ bot, walk me through the setup." "Set up a new SPY put bot for me."

If you already have a strategy in mind, include that context in the initial message. The more you tell Relay upfront, the more tailored the setup flow will be:

"I want to set up a short-biased 0DTE bot on SPY, trading puts, with a fairly conservative stop loss. Walk me through it."

The Setup Flow

Relay guides you through bot configuration in a logical sequence. The exact questions depend on your strategy type, but the flow generally covers:

1. Symbol and Direction

Relay starts with the basics: what symbol are you trading, and what's the directional bias of the bot, short, long, or neutral?

This also establishes whether you're trading calls, puts, or a combination, and whether the bot should be set up for directional plays or for a specific market condition (e.g., range-bound, trend-following).

2. Entry Conditions

How should the bot decide when to enter a position? This covers:

• What signal source triggers entry
• Any additional filters on top of the signal (time of day, VIX level, price conditions)
• Whether entries should be enabled only during specific market hours

Relay will explain the implications of different entry filter combinations and help you think through whether your intended conditions are well-specified.

3. Position Sizing

How much capital should the bot deploy per trade? Relay walks through:

• Fixed dollar sizing vs percentage-based sizing
• What the chosen size means in context of typical options premium for your symbol
• How sizing interacts with your stop loss to define your maximum risk per trade

4. Stop Loss

Where should the bot exit if the position moves against you? Relay helps you think through:

• The appropriate stop level for your symbol and strategy type
• How stop loss interacts with typical intraday volatility for the symbol
• The relationship between stop loss level and expected trade frequency (tighter stops = more stop-outs, wider stops = larger individual losses)

If you have existing bots running on the same symbol, Relay may surface what stop levels are working well in your current configuration as a reference point.

5. Take Profit Levels

Where should the bot exit when a trade is working? Relay walks through:

• How many take profit levels you want (TP1, TP2, TP3)
• The threshold for each TP level
• What percentage of the position to close at each level
• How trailing exits work and whether they're appropriate for your strategy

This is often the most nuanced part of the configuration. Relay explains the trade-offs between aggressive TP levels (lock in gains quickly) and more patient ones (capture larger moves but give back more on partial exits).

6. Cooldown Period

How long should the bot wait between trades? Relay explains:

• What cooldown does (prevents re-entry immediately after a trade closes)
• How to think about cooldown in the context of your signal frequency
• Whether a longer or shorter cooldown fits the strategy you're building

7. Configuration Review

Before finalizing, Relay summarizes the full configuration you've built across all parameters, giving you a chance to review everything in one place and make adjustments before committing.

At this stage, you can ask "what happens if I change X?" and Relay will explain the implications. This is a good moment to sanity-check the configuration against your intended strategy.

8. Confirming and Creating the Draft

Once you're satisfied with the configuration review, Relay presents a final confirmation card showing the full bot configuration. Confirm it and Relay creates the bot as a draft.

Drafts are not active, they won't trade until you activate them. Navigate to the Bots page to find the new draft, review the configuration one final time in the Bot Builder if you want to make any last adjustments, and activate it from there when you're ready to go live.

Getting the Most from the Setup Flow

Be specific about your strategy intent. The more clearly you describe what you're trying to achieve, the market conditions you're targeting, how aggressively you want to take profit, how much drawdown you can tolerate per trade, the more targeted Relay's guidance will be.

Ask questions freely. If a parameter doesn't make sense, ask. The setup flow is a conversation, not a form. "Why does the cooldown matter?" or "What would happen if I set the stop tighter?" are completely valid things to ask mid-flow.

Use your existing bots as reference. If you're building a new bot related to a strategy you're already running, tell Relay:

"I want to set up a new version of my QQQ UT bot but with a long bias instead of short. What should I change?"

Relay can use your existing configuration as a starting point rather than building from scratch.

Don't rush the configuration review. The final summary is your last checkpoint before going live. Read it carefully and ask about anything that looks different from what you intended. It's much easier to correct a configuration here than after the bot has been running.

After Setup: First Steps

Once your new bot is live, run a Bot Health Check after the first few days of trades to verify the configuration is working as intended. Early trades are your first real-world data points, Relay can help you evaluate whether the early results are consistent with what you built, or whether something needs adjustment.