directa-mcp

MCP server exposing Directa SIM's Darwin API (dAPI) to any MCP client — positions, balance, orders, historical data.

simoneb.github.io/directa-mcp carries the config for the current release, ready to copy, and a one-click extension for Claude Desktop.

Darwin listens on 127.0.0.1 only while it is running and logged in, so this is a local stdio server: your client starts it on the same machine. Hosts that only accept remote HTTP servers cannot run it (ChatGPT web and desktop among them; use Codex CLI there). There are no API keys — the authentication is Darwin being logged in.

Prerequisites

An active Directa account, with Darwin installed (needs a Java JRE) and logged in.
API access enabled: sign the disclaimer on directatrading.com, then check Sviluppatori > Dev kit in Darwin.
For candles and ticks only: the real-time data entitlement. Without it those tools fail with 1032, and get_darwin_status reports it as datafeed_enabled.

Install

Pick a tag from the releases — the latest unless you have a reason — and substitute it for <TAG>. uvx fetches and runs the server in an isolated environment; only uv is needed.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "directa": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from",
        "https://github.com/simoneb/directa-mcp/archive/refs/tags/<TAG>.tar.gz",
        "directa-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "DIRECTA_ENABLE_ORDERS": "false"
      }
    }
  }
}

Client	File
Claude Desktop	`%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json`, or `~/Library/Application Support/Claude/`
Cursor	`~/.cursor/mcp.json`, or `.cursor/mcp.json` per project
Windsurf	`~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json`
Gemini CLI	`~/.gemini/settings.json`, or `.gemini/settings.json` per project

VS Code keys it under servers and wants "type": "stdio", in .vscode/mcp.json. Codex CLI takes TOML in ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.directa]
command = "uvx"
args = ["--from", "https://github.com/simoneb/directa-mcp/archive/refs/tags/<TAG>.tar.gz", "directa-mcp"]

[mcp_servers.directa.env]
DIRECTA_ENABLE_ORDERS = "false"

Or let the client write it: claude mcp add, codex mcp add, code --add-mcp.

Pin a tag, not a branch — otherwise every start pulls the tip of master. Prefer the archive URL over git+https://…: the git form needs a git on PATH, and some clients hand the server too small an environment to find one.

Tools

Tool
`check_connection`	Are Darwin's ports up; `running`/`starting`/`stopped`. Needs no login
`get_darwin_status`	Connection state, release, whether the datafeed is enabled
`get_account_balance`	Liquidity, open P&L, equity
`get_availability`	Buying power, with and without margin
`get_positions`, `get_position`	Open positions, as Darwin reports them
`get_portfolio_overview`	Positions with derived price and value, totals, and a reconciliation check
`get_orders`	The day's orders with decoded state; `pending_only` for the live ones
`preview_limit_order`	What an order would cost, without placing it
`place_limit_order`, `modify_order`, `cancel_order`, `cancel_all_orders`	Real orders. Need the gate below
`start_darwin`	Launches dGO so you can log in. Needs `DIRECTA_AUTOSTART=true`
`get_daily_candles`, `get_intraday_candles`, `get_candle_data_range`, `get_tick_data`	OHLC candles and ticks. Need the datafeed entitlement

Symbols use Directa's formats: ENI.MI for Borsa Italiana stocks, bare tickers for ETFs (VWCE), M.<number> for bonds. Read one back from get_positions rather than guessing.

Each tool carries the protocol's annotations (readOnlyHint and friends), so a client can group them by permission and only ask for approval where it matters. The twelve reading tools are marked read-only; the six that put a command on the wire are not — including preview_limit_order, which places nothing but does send ACQAZ.

The order gate

Order tools work only with DIRECTA_ENABLE_ORDERS=true. Otherwise they send nothing and return success: false with blocked: true.

There is no simulated mode. The dAPI has no command that accepts an order without sending it to market, and Directa provides no test account, so any library offering one for this API is fabricating the responses. The flag is a safety catch, not a mode selector: it lives in the process configuration, so the model cannot turn it on — only you can. With it on, orders are real, with real money.

Starting Darwin

With DIRECTA_AUTOSTART=true the server exposes start_darwin, which launches dGO; Darwin itself has no installed executable. For it to get past dGO's tile grid, set AutoSelezione to "Darwin 2" in dGO's Preferenze — the server writes no settings of its own.

Darwin then asks for an OTP, so the tool does not wait: it returns once dGO is up and you finish the login, after which check_connection reports running. It launches only from stopped, since Directa allows one session at a time, and never closes Darwin. For the same OTP reason this server cannot run unattended.

Two data traps

INFOACCOUNT field names do not describe their contents. gain_euro is the open P&L; open_profit_loss is the portfolio's carrying cost. Reading it as a gain overstates it by nearly an order of magnitude.

Bonds are quoted as a percentage of nominal. 20,000 nominal at 95.0 is worth €19,000, not €1,900,000 — the naive quantity × price is wrong by 100×. get_portfolio_overview handles this and reconciles its own totals against Darwin's; if reconciliation.reconciled is false, don't present the numbers as fact.

Implementation

The client is one dependency-light file, src/directa_mcp/dapi.py. Every command and response format it uses, and the surprises behind them, are in docs/PROTOCOL.md. The project began on the community library directa-api-python, dropped after live testing — see docs/UPSTREAM.md.