Recipe · Trading bots

Your bot spots it. You approve it. From anywhere.

A trading bot that acts alone at 3 a.m. is a liability; a bot that proposes and waits for a human tap is a tool. Two recipes: a market alert that buzzes your phone the moment a threshold breaks (POST /v1/notify), and an approve-a-trade loop where the signal arrives with execute / skip buttons and nothing happens until you answer (POST /v1/ask). The human holds the trigger — that's the whole safety model.

Not financial advice. pingwa relays messages — your bot and your broker do the trading.

§ 1

Market alert: the threshold ping

A cron job or the loop your bot already runs checks a price; when it crosses your line, one POST puts it on your phone. The Idempotency-Key matters here: a price flapping around 250 would otherwise re-fire every tick — keyed by threshold and day, the crossing costs you exactly one message per day, however often it wobbles.

price_watch.py — cron or bot loop

import datetime, httpx, os

price = get_price("AAPL")  # your data feed: broker API, yfinance, ccxt...
if price >= 250:
    day = datetime.date.today().isoformat()
    httpx.post("https://pingwa.dev/v1/notify",
               headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['PINGWA_KEY']}",
                        "Idempotency-Key": f"aapl-250-{day}"},
               json={"text": f"AAPL crossed 250 — now {price:.2f}"},
               timeout=5)

Same shape for a crypto pair — swap the feed for your exchange's ticker endpoint and the key for eth-3200-…. pingwa holds each key for 24 hours: an identical retry replays the original result, and a changed body under the same key (the price moved) gets a 409 and sends nothing — either way a flapping threshold costs you at most one message per key per day.

§ 2

Approve a trade before it happens

The upgrade from "alert" to "decision": the bot sends its signal as a question with buttons and long-polls — the code genuinely stops on that line until you tap or 90 seconds pass (the server maximum). button_id is positional: b0 is the first button you passed, b1 the second. Only an explicit b0 places the order.

signal_gate.py — ask before acting

import httpx, os

r = httpx.post("https://pingwa.dev/v1/ask",
               headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['PINGWA_KEY']}"},
               json={"text": "Signal: buy 10 ETH @ 3,120 — execute?",
                     "buttons": ["execute", "skip"], "timeout": 90},
               timeout=95)
if r.status_code == 200 and r.json()["reply"]["button_id"] == "b0":
    place_order()   # your broker API — pingwa never touches your money

If you don't answer within the 90 seconds, /v1/ask returns HTTP 408 — and the snippet above simply doesn't trade. That's the fail-safe reading: no answer means skip, silence never buys anything. The question was still delivered to your phone, and a late tap is retrievable afterwards via GET /v1/messages/<id>/reply if your bot runs a slower loop (see the FAQ).

If the ask lands outside your 24h reply window (likely, for signals that arrive out of the blue), the buttons arrive as a numbered list instead of tap buttons — replying 1 (or the button's text, execute) works the same and still maps to b0.

§ 3

Why the human holds the trigger

The bot proposes. You dispose.

Human-in-the-loop isn't a compromise on automation — for real-money automation it is the design. The bot does what bots are good at (watching, computing, never sleeping); the order only exists after a human tap. Every non-answer, timeout and error resolves to the same default: don't trade.

Keep the risk checks in the bot: position-size limits, max daily loss, sanity bounds on price — enforce them in your code before the question is ever sent. pingwa relays messages; it is not a risk engine, and a WhatsApp tap should be the last gate, not the only one. Not financial advice — your bot decides what to propose, your broker executes, pingwa just carries the question and the tap.

§ 4

FAQ

How do I get a trading bot WhatsApp alert?

Snippet § 1: one httpx.post to /v1/notify from the loop your bot already runs. Text join to pingwa to get an API key, set it as PINGWA_KEY in the bot's environment, and the next threshold crossing buzzes your phone. Pass an Idempotency-Key like aapl-250-2026-07-16 so a flapping price costs one message, not fifty.

Can I approve a trade from my phone?

Yes — that's § 2: POST /v1/ask with ["execute", "skip"] buttons holds your bot until you tap, up to 90 seconds. For decisions that can wait hours (a daily rebalance, a swing signal), use the slower loop instead: send the signal with /v1/ask, treat the 408 as "pending" rather than skip, store the message_id, and poll GET /v1/messages/<id>/reply on the bot's next pass — the trade executes whenever you get around to answering, and never before. One rule for late approvals: re-check the price before placing — a stale yes shouldn't fill at any price.

Is there a crypto price alert WhatsApp API?

This is one: your script polls the exchange (ccxt, or the exchange's own ticker endpoint) and POSTs /v1/notify when BTC or ETH crosses your line — same § 1 snippet, different feed. No Twilio, no WABA, no Meta credentials: pingwa carries the message over its own official Meta Cloud API number, and you get the key by sending join once.

What if I don't answer in 90 seconds?

The ask returns HTTP 408 and your bot should treat it as skip — fail-safe means silence never places an order. The question stays on your phone; if you tap later, the reply is waiting at GET /v1/messages/<id>/reply, so a slower strategy can pick it up on its next cycle instead of discarding it.

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Not financial advice. pingwa relays messages; your bot and your broker do the trading. Signals and approvals are exactly the messages you want rare and deliberate — the free plan's 30 paid messages a month cover a disciplined strategy, and your button-tap replies inside the 24h window are free.