The `lumibot` Command¶

The lumibot command exists for one reason: to get you from pip install lumibot to a result on screen without first designing a strategy. It is optional. It is not a wrapper, a framework, or a new API. It writes an ordinary Strategy subclass to disk and runs it, and everything else in this documentation applies to that file unchanged.

See a result before you write anything¶

pip install lumibot
lumibot demo

demo backtests a moving-average strategy on free daily data. No API key and no broker account are involved. It prints the return and the path to the tearsheet it wrote, which you open in a browser.

Start your own project¶

lumibot init my-bot
lumibot backtest my-bot --days 90
lumibot run my-bot --paper

init writes two files and nothing else:

my-bot/
  strategy.py   the strategy you edit
  README.md     the three commands above

For an AI strategy instead of a Python one:

lumibot init my-bot --template ai

That template creates two agents, a researcher that may not trade and a trader that may, and is the same shape as ai_researcher_trader. It needs OPENAI_API_KEY.

What is in `strategy.py`¶

This is the part people get stuck on, so it is worth being exact. The generated file has two halves.

The class. An ordinary Strategy subclass with parameters, initialize and on_trading_iteration. This is the part you edit. Nothing is generated around it and nothing is hidden from you.

The runner block. At the bottom:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    from lumibot.credentials import IS_BACKTESTING

    if IS_BACKTESTING:
        ...
        MyBot.backtest(YahooDataBacktesting, end - timedelta(days=365), end, budget=100000)
    else:
        from lumibot.traders import Trader

        trader = Trader()
        trader.add_strategy(MyBot())
        trader.run_all()

That block is why the file works three ways:

How you run it	What happens
`lumibot backtest my-bot --days 90`	The CLI imports the class and supplies the dates and budget. The block does not fire.
`lumibot run my-bot --paper`	The CLI imports the class and connects the paper broker. The block does not fire.
`python strategy.py`	The block fires. `IS_BACKTESTING` decides between a one-year backtest and live trading through `Trader`.

This is the same layout a BotSpot strategy workspace uses in its main.py, so a file created here can be moved into BotSpot, or the other way, without being rewritten.

If you delete the runner block, the CLI still works and python strategy.py does nothing at all. That silence is the single most common way a first LumiBot project appears broken when it is not.

Growing out of the CLI¶

There is nothing to migrate away from. When you need a second strategy, a different data source, several symbols, or your own Trader setup, edit the same file or call backtest() yourself as How to Backtest describes. The CLI never owned anything.

Commands¶

Command	What it does
`lumibot demo`	Backtest a built-in strategy on free data. No keys, no files written to your project.
`lumibot init <project>`	Write `strategy.py` and `README.md`. `--template ai` writes the agent version. `--force` overwrites.
`lumibot backtest <project>`	Backtest the project. `--days` sets the window, `--budget` the starting cash.
`lumibot run <project>`	Trade the project. `--paper` or `--live` is required; `--live` also requires `--yes`.
`lumibot --version`	Print the installed version.

python -m lumibot works everywhere lumibot does, which is useful when the console script is not on your PATH.

The lumibot Command¶