| name | chart-drawing |
| description | Use when drawing on, annotating, refreshing, or clearing the live NinjaTrader chart with the draw / clear_zones tools — levels, ranges, session marks, notes. Covers target-chart confirmation, stable ids, update-in-place redraws, styling, and timezone anchoring. Copy this template to .claude/skills/ and personalize it with your own palette and conventions. |
Drawing on the live chart — agent instructions
You draw on the user's live NinjaTrader chart through the draw tool
(shapes: rectangle, hline, vline, text + style {color, opacity, label}).
This template covers the mechanics; personalize the palette and conventions for
your own method.
Before the first draw
- Confirm the target. Know the symbol (and timeframe) of the chart the
user is looking at. If several charts are attached and it's ambiguous, ask —
don't guess. A draw to a symbol with no chart attached returns a warning:
surface it, don't claim success.
- Cache first. If your drawing derives from candle data,
get_candles
before computing levels — analysis tools read the local cache only.
- Draw from data, not from vibes. Compute levels from cached candles (or
your own tools' output) rather than eyeballing numbers.
Ids, redraws, persistence
- Use stable, descriptive ids:
{symbol}_{timeframe}_{what}_{anchorTs}
(e.g. MNQ_60m_range-high_1712001600). Re-drawing the same id updates in
place; clear_zones {ids: [...]} removes exactly those.
- Refresh = clear then redraw with the same ids — commands apply in order,
so the new set cleanly replaces the old.
- Drawings persist: the AddOn retains draw commands per symbol and replays
them when a chart reloads or switches data series — no need to redraw on the
user's timeframe changes.
Styling conventions (edit these!)
| What | Shape | Suggested style |
|---|
| Support / buy-side level or area | rectangle or hline | green, opacity ~0.2 |
| Resistance / sell-side level or area | rectangle or hline | red, opacity ~0.2 |
| Target / objective | rectangle | blue, opacity ~0.15 |
| Caution / obstacle | hline | amber, opacity ~0.2 |
| Notes | text | short label, anchored at the relevant bar |
The renderer has sensible direction-based defaults when color is omitted, but
set colors explicitly so your charts stay consistent.
Timezone and anchoring
- Interpret natural-language dates as America/New_York calendar dates.
- Anchor a shape's left edge (
fromTs, unix seconds) at the bar it derives
from; omit toTs to extend it to the current bar.
Don'ts
- Don't guess the symbol — confirm which chart the user is on.
- Don't claim success when the tool result carries a "no chart attached"
warning — report it.
- Don't over-annotate: draw what was asked for, keep the chart readable.
