What problem does it solve? Developers integrating with Alpaca's APIs face confusing differences between the Broker, Trading, Market Data, and Authentication API families — different base URLs, auth schemes, and wire conventions that cause subtle production bugs. This Skill provides the cross-cutting knowledge (URLs, auth, pagination, rate limits, money precision, async state machines) and routes to focused sub-skills for each domain. ## Core Features & Use Cases - API family routing: Explains the four Alpaca API families, their base URLs, and authentication schemes (HTTP Basic, key/secret headers, OAuth 2.0), then points to the right focused sub-skill for onboarding, funding, journals, orders, market data, SSE events, reconciliation, rate limits, or money precision. - Wire convention guidance: Documents numbers-as-strings, UUID/ULID identifiers, idempotency via client_order_id, pagination tokens, rate-limit headers, and asynchronous status state machines. - Sandbox-first workflow: Walks through a nine-step path from sandbox setup and account creation through funding, journaling, order placement, event subscription, and reconciliation. - Use Case: A fintech developer building a neobroker app asks how to open user accounts and place orders on Alpaca; the Skill explains Broker API Basic auth, the sandbox base URL, the account lifecycle, and directs them to the onboarding and trading-orders sub-skills. ## Quick Start Ask the assistant to explain how to authenticate with the Alpaca Broker API and create a sandbox account, then follow the routed sub-skill for your specific task.
