Glossary

Short definitions for Strategy Lab terms used across the manual.

Activation - The moment a setup, entry, or exit condition begins passing and the engine starts moving that unit toward action.

Allocation percent - For entries, the share of the strategy's configured position size assigned to that entry. For exits, the share of the current remaining position the exit unit attempts to close.

Cancel condition - A boolean expression that cancels a setup or working order when it becomes true.

Cooldown - A waiting period after a setup cancel or reset during which the setup cannot re-activate. Measured in bars.

Custom token - A named value you connect from an indicator plot on the chart so YAML expressions can reference it.

Diagnostic - A structured message from the engine describing a YAML, expression, token, strategy, runtime, or diagnostic-system issue. Diagnostics can be errors, warnings, or info messages.

Entry - A named unit of work that submits an order to build the position.

Entry OCA - One-cancels-all behavior applied to entry orders through entry_oca_group and entry_oca_type.

Error - A blocking diagnostic. The strategy will not trade until the issue is fixed.

Exit - A take profit or stop loss unit that reduces or closes the current position.

Expression - A condition or calculation written in the Strategy Lab expression language, such as PRICE_CLOSE > EMA_200.

Gate condition - A prerequisite expression that must pass before a setup, entry, take profit, or stop loss can evaluate its trigger.

GLOBAL - The implicit setup context used when a unit does not name a setup. Useful for simple strategies; easy to misuse in complex ones.

Lock prices - A setting that captures an order price when the unit first triggers instead of recalculating it every bar.

OCA - One-cancels-all order behavior. Strategy Lab exposes OCA controls for entries and uses reduce-style OCA behavior internally for exits.

Position cycle - The period from flat into a position and back to flat, or from one direction into another. Runtime state resets at cycle boundaries.

Position remaining percent - The current remaining position as a percentage of the cycle's peak quantity. Used for scale-out and break-even-stop logic.

Reduce OCA - An OCA mode where sibling orders reduce against the same remaining exposure instead of acting like unrelated full-size orders.

Setup - A named market context or regime filter. Entries and exits can belong to setups.

State token - A generated boolean token that exposes the current state of a named setup, entry, take profit, or stop loss.

Stop loss - An exit unit intended to close or reduce a position when the trade thesis is invalidated.

Take profit - An exit unit intended to close or reduce a position when profit conditions are met.

Token - A named value available to expressions. Tokens can be built in, custom, or generated from YAML unit names.

Trigger condition - The primary expression that tells a unit when to act after its gate has passed.

Unit of work - A named setup, entry, take profit, or stop loss. Each unit has its own fields, state, and generated tokens.

Warning - A non-blocking diagnostic. The strategy may still trade, but the warning should be understood before trusting the result.

Working - The state where an entry or exit has an armed or working order/runtime state but is not active yet.