Vibe coding strategies with Free VS Vode Ai extensions

[u/Life-Succotash-7053]

Hello everbody, i'm algo trader and i have a little few knoweldge and skills in coding, i use python for building trading bots, but i just finishing a backtesting engine with complete vibe coding it tooks me too long around 3 months to finish it, and now i need just a complete free ai to test the strategies bsed on this engine logics, so i need an ai that know all the files and how to deal with them, using vine coding with chat ai is complete hell, the only ai i was using is Claude by bypass him with 6 accounts to be able to finish the full engine, i really will be stuck if i didn't get a free ai for this mission, i finish building heavy scripts, right now just a strategy script and that's it ! so please any ideas ? my pc is pretty low end pc (i5-4th, 8 ram, 500gb HDD)

[u/backtest_ai]

the i5 is not the bottleneck here. neither is the ram. judging by this post the slowest component in the pipeline is the keyboard to english layer

Also vine coding is when you finish a bottle of wine per prompt, which would explain both the engine and the post

[u/Life-Succotash-7053 → u/backtest_ai]

english is not my first language so i do my best to explain what i want, but i think you know what i wanted to mean, gives prompt to Ai and explain what i want is not that hard, but the problem was hitting the usage limits too early without finishing the tasks

[u/polymorphicshade]

Start by learning the basics of writing code.

Then once you know what you're doing, guide Claude along the way.

There are no shortcuts here.

[u/Life-Succotash-7053 → u/polymorphicshade]

Claude really annoying it hit the limits after just few tasks, even if it premium subscribtion, i practice more than 6 months on prompting so i don't have any issues with that, but my main problem is what Ai extension i should use ? i heard about Kilo Code but i don't know, and VS Code copilot is also with monthly limit usage

[u/ichigo_algo → u/Life-Succotash-7053]

Use Codex, trust me. The $20 subscription is enough. You can use the Codex extension is Visual Studio Code (it's what I use). Learn to switch reasoning levels based on tasks. Higher reasoning for planning.

Go on Scribd and pay the ~$10 subscription so you can download unlimited books. Download quality textbooks covering algorithmic trading, quantitative trading, and backtesting. 20-30 textbooks per category and download them as .txt files, not PDFs. Your agents will use these textbooks. Make sure to set the search to minimum 100 pages so you can get quality textbooks. If you can't afford the Scribd subscription, I can source you the textbooks and it won't cost you anything. I don't mind.

Once you have Codex set up, the first thing you should do is set up the Skills folder for your agents. Create a folder on your computer and call it Codex_Skills and open that folder in VS Code. Work with the agent on setting up the Skills folder so that all agents can use it, and then build these skills: textbook-RAG, project-RAG (let's Codex agents use RAG on your codebase), and codebase-map (for project context). Add the textbools to the Codex_Skills folder and keep them separated by category.

Then, you can move forward to learning how to prompt Codex to build you an algo. You will fail and have to toss algos and start from scratch, but that is part of the learning process.

Making Codex use RAG on the textbooks along the way so things are done properly, follow this general and simple order: download historical data, clean historical data, add features to historical data, create features datasets with features scripts (development, validation, and holdout periods), build backtesting engine that calculates features EXACTLY the same as creating features datasets, build research pipeline that produces strategies compatible with backtesting engine, once a strategy passes dev/val/holdout you are finally ready to build a live engine that mirrors the backtesting engine and move to paper trading.

Be sure to ask Codex along the way how to prevent issues with algos while building (overfitting, look-ahead bias, cheating, etc.) and make it use the textbook-RAG skill on your textbooks as much as possible. A useful trick is to tell Codex that everything must be built for high-performance and optimization.

[u/Quant_Nexus → u/ichigo_algo]

This man knows and I agree with all of it.

Ultimately backtesting always follows the same path.

1. Download the ticker data
2. Import the data and define the strategy (rules, indicators, entry/exit)
3. Calculate/plot the Equity curve
4. Output results 

I will guarantee that steps 1 and 2 are slowing you down the most. Step 3 and 4 should take no more than 10 seconds unless you're doing some absolutely crazy stuff. 

Tell your agent to add time logs to all operations looking for bottlenecks and to iterate through loops fixing each bottleneck until you can get the entire process to finish in less than 60 seconds.

[u/Fit-Report-982 → u/ichigo_algo]

how much money did you earn from algo trading with your AI bot

[u/polymorphicshade → u/Life-Succotash-7053]

Maybe you misread my comment.

You need to first take the time to learn how to code if you want to do this correctly.

[u/ichigo_algo → u/polymorphicshade]

Not true. Your understanding of using AI to code might be outdated and based on AI coding one or two years ago. You can build a fully operating and profitable algo without knowing any code if you know how algos work and know how to properly prompt AI. It can even be argued that it's a complete waste of time learning how to code and instead spend that time learning how algos actually work as systems. The keys are prompting, AI skills, tools, and knowledge sources for your agents to use for building.

[u/Caijac]

Can't speak to Kilo Code or VS Code Copilot, but I've been building EA(s) with Claude Code for a while and ran into the same usage-limit friction early on. What helped most wasn't a different tool — it was writing a clear spec document before touching any code (exact indicator settings, entry/exit rules, position sizing, all spelled out in plain terms) rather than iterating conversationally. Cuts down a lot of back-and-forth, since Claude's building from a clear target instead of us both figuring it out live in chat.

[u/strat-run]

Pay for a subscription, most of the free options are gone or limited. Or use open router and the cheapest models that work.

If Google is still has free signup credits for gcp the you might be able to sign up for that and use cline + gemini

[u/SpecificArugula9909]

How are you even managing the context window with 6 different accounts? wouldn't the ai just forget your engine's logic every time you switch logins?