The Bentley blueprint
How an AI trading analyst is put together
This is the system I run every day, broken into the pieces you would need to build your own: what each one does, what it costs, and the order to build it in.
Bentley is a research and discipline tool. It watches the market, writes trade setups and explains its reasoning. It does not make anyone money on its own, and nothing here is financial advice.
The stack
Five layers
Every AI trading system I have seen that works, mine included, comes down to the same five layers. Get them in this shape and you can swap any single piece later without starting over.
- Market data
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Price, funding, open interest and who is long or short. Most of this is free from public exchange APIs, polled every few minutes and saved to a file or small database.
Start with one or two coins and one timeframe. More data is not more edge.
- The brain
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A language model that reads the data and writes setups against your rules. I use Claude. You give it a written rulebook: what a valid setup looks like, where the stop goes, what would prove it wrong.
The model explains, the rules decide. If you cannot write the rule down, the AI cannot follow it.
- The filter
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A plain statistical check that says when to sit out. Bentley labels the market bull, bear or sideways and only lets setups through when the signal is strong enough.
This is the piece most people skip, and the one that stops the system trading every wiggle.
- Dashboard and alerts
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One screen to see everything, and a phone alert when something matters. A simple web dashboard plus a Telegram bot you can ask questions from anywhere.
- Where it runs
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A small cloud server, on 24/7. Timers fetch the data, run the analysis and send alerts. Daily backups so a bad change never costs you the history.
Monthly costs
What it costs to run
Rough ranges for a one-person system tracking a handful of coins. Your numbers depend on how often the AI runs and how much it reads each time.
| Piece | Per month | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud server | $5 to $20 | A small virtual server is plenty |
| AI usage | $10 to $60 | The biggest lever: run less often, send less data |
| Market data | $0 | Public exchange APIs cover the basics |
| Alerts | $0 | A Telegram bot is free |
| Domain and HTTPS | $0 to $2 | Optional, only if you want a public dashboard |
| Total | $15 to $80 |
Estimates as of October 2026, in US dollars. Paid data feeds and premium models cost more.
Build order
The order to build it in
Each phase is useful on its own, so you get value before the whole thing is finished.
Week one
Data on a screen
Pull prices, funding and open interest for one coin and show them on a simple page. No AI yet. You are learning what the data looks like.
Week two
Write the rulebook
Put your trading rules in plain English: what a setup is, where the stop goes, how much you risk. This document is the real product.
Week three
Add the brain
Have the AI read the data against the rulebook and write setups with an entry, stop, targets and the reason it could be wrong. Send them to Telegram.
Week four
Add the filter
Add the regime check so setups only go out when conditions suit them. Expect far fewer alerts. That is the point.
The next 30 days
Paper trade and judge it
Let it paper trade its own setups and log every one. Only after a month of honest results do you decide whether it deserves real money.
Guardrails
Rules I would not skip
- Paper first. At least 30 days of logged paper trades before any real money.
- Hard risk limits in code, not in the prompt. Max position size, fixed stop, a daily loss cap. The AI can suggest, the code enforces.
- Distrust a beautiful backtest. If it looks too good, it is usually fitted to the past. Test on data the system has never seen.
- Log every decision. What it saw, what it said and what happened. That log is how you tell skill from luck.
- Keep the keys separate. Exchange keys with no withdrawal rights, stored outside the code.
Next step
Want help with yours?
On a free 30-minute call we turn this into a plan for your coins, your rules and your budget. You will be talking to me, not a sales rep.
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