Research-only MCP server: your AI as a quant research desk. 90 tools, no trades, no brokers.
Helvetic Research MCP Server (io.github.KushPatil22/helvetic-research)
This research-only Model Context Protocol (MCP) server is designed to support quantitative analysis in MCP clients. It focuses on backtesting and related research workflows rather than executing trades, positioning itself as an engine for portfolio analysis, risk analysis, and quantitative research tasks.
🛠️ Key Features
Backtesting
Monte Carlo (as a research topic)
Portfolio analysis
Risk analysis
Strategy backtesting
🚀 Use Cases
Conduct quant research via MCP clients
Evaluate strategies using backtests
Perform risk analysis and portfolio analysis from an MCP-integrated workflow
⚡ Developer Benefits
Research-only scope (no trade execution mentioned)
Built for use with MCP clients such as Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, and Cursor
⚠️ Limitations
Research-only: “backtests, no trades” indicates trading is not supported
Helvetic Research turns the AI interface you already use into a quantitative research desk.
Describe a strategy, portfolio, signal, or track record; your AI translates the request into a
validated specification and calls a deterministic research engine. The result comes back with
metrics, robustness diagnostics, provenance, integrity checks, and reproducibility metadata.
The hosted service exposes 90 MCP research tools. It does not place trades, connect to
brokers, or provide investment advice.
Why it exists
Asking an AI to write and run a one-off backtest can produce plausible output without a stable
method, consistent annualisation, realistic costs, or an audit trail. Helvetic separates the two
jobs:
flowchart LR
A[Research question] --> B[Your AI interface]
B --> C[Validated JSON strategy specification]
C --> D[Deterministic Helvetic engine]
D --> E[Research result]
E --> F[Metrics and charts]
E --> G[Robustness tests]
E --> H[Provenance and audit bundle]
The AI handles conversation and tool selection. Helvetic handles calculation, validation,
storage, provenance, and reporting. Arbitrary client code is never executed inside the hosted
web/MCP process.
Research → Validate → Understand
Research
Validate
Understand
Backtest strategies, portfolios, signals, and external track records
Challenge results for overfitting, instability, costs, look-ahead risk, and regime dependence
Helvetic is designed to challenge a result, not merely produce one:
Walk-forward out-of-sample analysis
Monte Carlo simulation with IID and block bootstrap
Parameter sweeps and cost/signal-lag sensitivity
Probability of Backtest Overfitting via CSCV
Probabilistic and Deflated Sharpe Ratio
Historical stress periods and custom scenarios
Volatility, trend, and macro regime analysis
Factor exposure, alpha decay, capacity, and implementation-cost analysis
EVT tail-risk analysis, VaR, and Expected Shortfall
Trade-order permutation testing to separate a real edge from sequencing luck
Benchmark-regime Sharpe decomposition showing which regimes the edge actually comes from
A 12-component Research Grade measuring strength of evidence, not whether a strategy is
suitable to trade
Due diligence and record-keeping
Beyond running your own ideas, Helvetic helps you vet others' claims and track what you actually did:
Track-record reconciliation re-simulates a stated set of rules and reconciles the claimed
return, CAGR, Sharpe, and drawdown against a clean re-run, field by field, flagging any drift
beyond tolerance. The due-diligence answer to "is this track record real?".
Duplicate-strategy detection fingerprints a strategy by the trades it actually makes and
flags near-duplicates among your saved runs, so a "new" idea that is really an old bet in a
different costume is caught even when the rules look different.
Research journal lets you log a trade you actually took with your rationale and a strategy
tag, close it for an automatic P&L, return, and R-multiple, and review a per-strategy scorecard
(win rate, expectancy, profit factor). It closes the research-to-reality loop. This is
record-keeping only: Helvetic executes nothing and gives no advice.
Outputs and reproducibility
Every completed run records the information needed to understand what was actually tested:
Data provider and retrieval timestamp
Adjustment method and coverage information
Missing-data, stale-cache, and provider-disagreement warnings
SHA-256 dataset and strategy fingerprints
Engine version, assumptions, configured costs, and integrity checks
Frequency-correct performance and risk metrics
Results can be viewed on the interactive web result page or inside supported AI chats through
an MCP App. They can also be exported as branded PDF, Excel, CSV, JSON, or a self-verifying
audit bundle containing raw series, formulas, hashes, assumptions, and provenance.
Connect an AI client
Helvetic is a hosted, remote MCP server. There is nothing to install: you point your AI client
at one URL and authorise it once with Google.
Add the hosted MCP endpoint to your client and complete the OAuth prompt:
text
https://helveticresearch.com/mcp
Claude (Desktop or web): Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector → paste the URL.
ChatGPT (Developer mode / connectors): add an MCP server with the URL above.
Cursor / Codex / other MCP clients: add a remote MCP server pointing at the URL.
Full, client-specific steps with screenshots: /connect.
Send a complete research request. A good first prompt names a ticker, a date range, the rule,
and the costs:
text
Backtest SPY from 2005-01-01 to 2026-01-01. Go long when price crosses
above its 200-day simple moving average and exit when it crosses below.
Apply 10 bps transaction costs, show the key metrics, then run a
walk-forward test and an overfitting check.
More copy-paste starter prompts and ready-to-run strategy specifications are in
examples/.
The Free plan includes 250 research credits per month and full available history from
community data sources. Heavy workflows use more credits than lightweight lookups.
Data coverage
Asset/data type
Primary path
Fallback/reference path
Equities and ETFs
Yahoo Finance
Tiingo EOD when configured
Crypto
Yahoo Finance
Coinbase Exchange
Macro and rates
FRED
ECB Data Portal where applicable
FX
Yahoo Finance
ECB reference series where applicable
Built-in intraday retrieval uses Yahoo/yfinance and preserves full OHLCV timestamps. Practical
provider lookbacks are approximately 7 days for 1m, 60 days for 2m–90m, and 730 days for
1h plus resampled 2h/3h/4h. Tiingo and Coinbase fallbacks are daily-only. Longer or
licensed intraday histories can be supplied through custom OHLCV tools.
Community data is useful for research and prototyping but is not a licensed point-in-time
institutional feed. Historical constituents, delistings, symbol changes, corporate actions,
futures rolls, and survivorship controls can be incomplete. Read the full
data coverage and limitations.
Important boundaries
Research only: no orders, brokerage connections, or portfolio execution
No investment advice: outputs are analytical and educational
Synthetic options: Black-Scholes simulations, not historical option-chain fills
No arbitrary code execution: strategies run through supported deterministic schemas
Private by default: research records are account-scoped; publication is explicit
Failures remain visible: degraded data and unsupported requests return warnings or clear
errors rather than silent success
Report vulnerabilities privately using SECURITY.md
About this repository
The production research engine is a hosted service and is not open source. This public repository
provides the canonical project overview, capability documentation, data limitations, security
policy, and registry metadata. An open-source verifier for exported Helvetic audit bundles is
planned for this repository.