Getting Started
Backtest.ai is a research platform for systematic options traders, and every workflow on it ends in a backtest. You write a strategy idea into a signal, optionally shape it with a model, and run it against real intraday options data, with every load-bearing default sitting next to the number it produced. This section orients you to what the platform is, the vocabulary the rest of the docs lean on, the research pipeline, the workspace you do it in, and the one path guaranteed to end with a working result on screen.
Read the seven pages in order, or jump to the one you need.
Backtest.ai is in internal testing, with a closed beta targeted for September 2026; see platform status.
The pages in this section
- What Backtest.ai is, and who it's for sets the frame: a research platform for options traders, who it serves, and the honesty stance that shapes every number.
- Core concepts and vocabulary defines the terms the rest of the docs reuse without re-explaining: Signal, accessor, spine, observation-count, position, book, leg.
- The research pipeline walks the Signal to Model to Backtest flow, why the first two stages are optional, and why every path lands on a backtest.
- The workspace: projects, tabs, and your library covers where your work lives: a global library of saved entities, projects as working surfaces, tabs, and the project symbol.
- UI-first, the DSL second explains when you build in the interface and when you write code, plus the one exception: signals are authored in the Signal language, not built visually.
- Quickstart: your first backtest takes one strategy from idea to a running result on screen.
- The AI research assistant shows how the assistant answers Signal-language questions with cited sources and computes in a sandbox.
Where to go next
Once the vocabulary settles, the rest of the docs go deep on each surface:
- Data & Methodology documents how every number is produced, from IV and greeks to fills and marks.
- The Signal language teaches the expression language from the ground up.
- Backtests covers position design, contract selection, sizing, margin, and reading results.
- The glossary of platform terms is the full reference for every term introduced here.