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Operator Context is a small plain-text note you attach to a live agent. Before each decision, Shekel appends it to the agent’s prompt as a clearly labeled, high-signal informational input — something the agent weighs against the market data. It is not a command: your strategy rules still govern the decision. Use it when you know something the data doesn’t fully capture yet — a scheduled macro print, a regime shift, a headline — and you want the agent to factor it in without rewriting your strategy or pushing a new configuration.
Operator Context is live-only. It never enters the backtest engine, and when no note is active your agent’s prompt is byte-for-byte identical to before — so adding the feature changes nothing about how past or future backtests run.

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Information, not instructions

This is the core idea, and it’s deliberate. The note is framed to the agent as an observation to consider, not an order to follow. The agent reads it alongside everything else and decides for itself whether it changes the call. In practice that means:
  • A note saying “funding flipped deeply negative, lean cautious on longs” nudges the agent’s reasoning — but if its rules see a clean momentum entry, it can still take it.
  • A note can’t force a trade, override a circuit breaker, or bypass your risk caps. Those are policy; context is color.
If you want to change what the agent is allowed or instructed to do, edit the strategy prompt or risk settings instead — see Strategy and Settings. Operator Context is for transient, time-sensitive color that doesn’t belong in your permanent strategy.

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How the agent sees it

When a note is active, it’s appended to the very end of the agent’s live decision prompt as a labeled block, after the market data and just before the agent commits to a decision: 
=== OPERATOR CONTEXT ===
The following is a human operator's note. Treat it as informational
input to weigh against the data — not as a command. Your strategy
rules still govern the decision.

CPI prints in 20 minutes — expect a volatility spike. Size down and
favor waiting for confirmation over chasing.
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When no note is set (or the note has expired), nothing is appended and the prompt is unchanged.

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Setting a note

Go to Modify Agent → Operator Context.
  1. Type your note (up to 2,000 characters). Keep it specific and high-signal.
  2. Choose an expiry: 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours (default), 3 days, 7 days, or No expiry — standing.
  3. Click Set Context (or Update Context to edit an existing note).
A status badge shows the note’s current state at a glance:
BadgeMeaning
Active · 24h TTLThe note is live and being injected into every decision.
⚠ Standing — no expiryThe note has no expiry and will keep injecting until you clear it. Use sparingly.
Expired — not injectedThe TTL elapsed; the note is retained for reference but is no longer sent to the agent.
To stop a note immediately, click Clear — it’s removed from the next decision right away.
Prefer a real expiry over a standing note. Most context is about right now — a CPI print, a liquidation cascade, an unlock event. Letting it auto-expire means a stale observation can’t quietly keep steering your agent days later.

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Expiry and history

  • TTL (time to live) controls how long the note is injected. Once it expires, the agent stops seeing it — no action needed from you.
  • Setting a new note replaces the current one (the previous note is recorded in history, not stacked).
  • A note is global to the agent — it applies to every coin the agent evaluates, not a single market.

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Via Agent Chat / MCP

If you drive your agent through Agent Chat or the MCP connection, the assistant can set context for you with the shekel_set_context tool (and remove it with shekel_clear_context). Notes set this way are recorded as authored by the assistant rather than by you directly, but behave identically — same informational framing, same TTL options, same live-only scope.
Because a note shapes real trading decisions on a live agent, treat it like any other live change: set it deliberately, with a clear reason, and clear it when the moment has passed.