The Indicators Lab: Complete Guide to How It Works

Indicators turn raw price and volume into signals — they are the building blocks of every strategy. The Setup.Cash Indicators Lab is where you explore, build, test, and manage them. This guide walks through everything it does.

The Three Tabs

Open the lab at /indicators. It has three tabs:

• Library — 100+ built-in indicators (RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, Supertrend, Ichimoku, ADX, VWAP, Stochastic, and many more). Each one shows its full settings and its outputs/functions — exactly what it computes and plots, on the price pane or a sub-pane.
• Presets — save a configured indicator (for example, "RSI 7 on M5 for scalping") and reuse it across strategies. Presets can be scoped to specific timeframes and symbols.
• Custom — build your own indicator, fully owned by you, editable, and usable anywhere.

Two Ways to Build Your Own Indicator

1. With AI (text → indicator)

Describe the indicator in plain language and Claude codes a complete, advanced indicator — all inputs, outputs, and signals. Crucially, the server runs it on real candles to verify it works (and auto-retries if it finds a mistake) before handing it back, so you never receive a broken indicator. Generation runs server-side and survives a page refresh — if you reload, the lab reconnects to the in-progress job. See the AI Indicator Generator.

2. By hand (no AI)

Use the simple formula language — a stateless, per-bar series language. Declare your inputs and outputs, then write the logic with let, plot(...), and event(...):

let basis = ema(close, len)
let dev = stdev(close, len) * mult
plot("upper", basis + dev)
plot("lower", basis - dev)
event("breakout", close > basis + dev)

You get built-in price series (open, high, low, close, volume, hl2, hlc3) and 50+ functions — ema, sma, rsi, atr, vwap, stdev, zscore, correlation, linreg, slope, crossover, barssince, valuewhen, and more. The editor has syntax highlighting and line numbers. Full walkthrough: create custom indicators without coding.

Validation: It Can't Break Later

Every custom indicator is fully run when you save it. Invalid code — an undefined name, an unknown function — is rejected at save with a clear message. That means an indicator that saves is an indicator that runs, so it can never crash later inside a live strategy.

Preview and Test on a Chart

The lab's chart workspace lets you:

• Choose a symbol, timeframe, and candle window (or a date range).
• Run Preview / Test to render candles with your indicator overlaid (main pane + sub-pane).
• Read stats for each output — min, max, last value, and signal counts.

Both built-in and custom indicators have Test and Preview buttons.

Customize a Built-In

Built-in indicators are shared and read-only. The Customize button makes your own editable copy of one — saved to your profile only, never affecting the built-in or other users. From there you can tweak its logic freely.

Use Your Indicator in Strategies

A saved indicator is a first-class building block everywhere:

• Text-to-strategy: mention it by name and the AI uses your indicator by reference (not a generic built-in).
• Simple builder: add the Custom Indicator block and pick it from the dropdown.
• Blueprint builder: the custom indicator node shows your indicator by name with its real outputs.

Per-User and Safe

Custom indicators are strictly per-user. You can only edit your own, and nothing you do affects the shared library or anyone else's indicators. It is your private toolbox.

Where to Go Next

• Use the AI Indicator Generator
• Build an indicator by hand
• Indicators Lab documentation

Open the Indicators Lab and build your first indicator — describe it to the AI, or write a few lines of formula. Either way, preview it, save it, and put it to work in a strategy.