The problem this solves
You buy something at $100, intending to take profit at $110 and cut the loss at $95. Then the market moves, and you are deciding in the moment rather than sticking to the plan. That is where most discipline is lost.
A bracket order fixes it by deciding both exits at the same moment you decide the entry. One action places the buy and arms a take-profit above and a stop-loss below. Whichever hits first closes the position and cancels the other.
In Pairlens you build that once as a workflow, then fire it from the order ticket on any pair. Open Workflows in the left nav, drag steps from the palette, and connect them. Every step carries its own controls, so a size, a price or a wait is set right there on the graph.
Workflows go further than a plain bracket when you need it: scale out in tranches, wait for a condition before adding, branch on whether something filled. But if you only ever use them for entry plus stop plus target, that alone is worth the ten minutes.
Describe it instead
The assistant that writes Python indicators and deploys bots wires steps here too. Open it from the sparkle above the workflow list, or from its dock on any page. “After my entry fills, take profit at +5% and stop out at -3%” gets you the graph, laid out and connected, in one message. It reads the installed step palette first, so it uses the steps this terminal actually has rather than inventing one, and it reads the validator back: a missing trigger or a dangling edge is its problem to fix before it answers.
What it cannot do is commit. Everything it writes lands as pending changes on the canvas, exactly as if you had dragged the steps in yourself, and the commit bar is still where a workflow becomes real. Ask it to change the plan and it rewrites the graph; the diff shows you what moved.
The empty page leads with the same offer, one sentence and three starting points. When a request is really an alert (something that fires on its own rather than off your order), it says so and builds it on Notifications instead, without restarting the conversation.
The step palette
Trigger
Order Input. Every workflow starts here. It represents the order that kicks the chain off, the one you submit from the ticket. Steps downstream inherit its side, size, and fill price.
Orders
Market Order. Fires immediately. Side can inherit from the trigger, invert it (which is how an exit is expressed), or be pinned to buy or sell. Size is either a percentage of the input order or a fixed amount.
Limit Order. Same side and size options, plus a price mode: a fixed price, a percentage offset from current price, or an absolute offset from current price. Offsets are what make a workflow reusable across price levels.
Take Profit. Arms against the entry fill. Trigger on a percentage gain or an absolute price level, close all or part of the position with the Close % slider, and execute as market or limit.
Stop Loss. The mirror image: trigger on a percentage loss or a price level, close all or part, market or limit.
Take Profit and Stop Loss use exchange-native trigger orders where the venue provides them, so the order rests at the exchange and survives Pairlens being closed. On a venue with no trigger-order support, a stop-loss is refused rather than faked. A resting limit below the market would fill instantly, which is the opposite of a stop.
Logic
Condition. Two outputs, pass and fail, so the chain forks. Conditions are price above a level, price below a level, or percentage change from the entry price (signed: +5 passes on a 5% rise, -3 on a 3% fall).
Parallel Split. Two to eight branches that run at once. This is how you scale out: split into three, and give each branch its own Take Profit at a different level with a different close percentage.
Wait. Pause for a duration in seconds, minutes, or hours before continuing.
Installed plugins can contribute more step types through the
workflow:step-types capability, and they show up in the palette next to the
built-ins.
A worked example: entry with a bracket
- Order Input, the entry you submit from the ticket.
- Take Profit, trigger at +4%, close 100%, market.
- Stop Loss, trigger at -2%, close 100%, market.
Wire both exits off the trigger. Save. Now select this workflow in the ticket’s Workflow tab, set your size, and hold to run. You get the entry and both exits from one action, at a 2:1 reward-to-risk ratio you can read off the canvas.
A worked example: scaling out
- Order Input
- Parallel Split into three branches
- Branch one: Take Profit at +2%, close 50%
- Branch two: Take Profit at +5%, close 30%
- Branch three: Stop Loss at -3%, close 100%
Validating and running
The canvas validates as you build. A step with a missing or out-of-range field is flagged before you can commit, and the commit bar summarises what changed.
When you select a workflow in the order ticket, Pairlens checks it against the selected venue first. If a step is unsupported there, the ticket names the step and the reason instead of letting you run something that would half-execute.
While a workflow is executing you get a progress toast, and its steps report as executed or skipped, so a chain that took the fail branch is legible after the fact rather than mysterious.
Linking to one workflow
The workflow on the canvas is in the address, as /workflows?workflow=<id>. A
link opens that plan rather than an empty canvas, the back button walks between
the ones you were comparing, and “add a second take-profit to this” needs no
further explanation to the assistant.
Guardrails still apply
Every order a workflow places goes through the same guarded path as a manual trade. If it would breach a risk guardrail, it is blocked and the workflow reports it. A stop-loss step that cannot be armed fails loudly rather than leaving you unprotected and unaware.