Connecting your platform is what turns your rules from reminders into enforcement. Once connected, the app sees your fills and positions, closes trades that break a rule, and parks a protective stop at your daily loss floor. Without a connection you log every trade by hand and the app can only block, not enforce.
Which connection do I use?
Tradovate. Use this if your account has a Tradovate or NinjaTrader brokerage login. That includes almost every prop-firm account (Apex, Topstep, and others set up on Tradovate) and NinjaTrader brokerage accounts, since both run on the same backend. Signing in happens in your browser. The app never sees your password.
NinjaTrader 8 Desktop (Rithmic). Windows only. Use this only when your account has no Tradovate or NinjaTrader login at all: Rithmic-based accounts and NinjaTrader's built-in simulator. The app installs a small add-on inside NinjaTrader that reports your trades.
Interactive Brokers. Use this for an IBKR account you trade in Trader Workstation, on Mac or Windows. The app talks to TWS on your own computer through its local API, so TWS must be running. Same full enforcement as Tradovate, including cancelling the orders you place in TWS during a lockout.
One login = one connection. Each Tradovate login only sees its own accounts. If you have a personal Tradovate login and a separate prop-firm login, add both as separate logins and connect each one.
Connect Tradovate
Open Settings. The Platform Connection panel is at the top. Read the short "what this connection does with your data" box so you know exactly what the app can and cannot do.
Under Your Tradovate logins, give your login a name so you can tell it apart later, for example "Personal" or "Apex". Names save automatically.
Click Connect. Your browser opens Tradovate's own sign-in page.
Sign in on that page with your Tradovate or NinjaTrader credentials and approve the connection. Come back to the app. The status turns green and reads Connected.
Have more than one login? Click Add a login, name it, and connect it the same way.
Every morning. Tradovate's sign-in expires overnight, so the first connection of each day asks you to sign in again. The morning ritual does this for you: its first screen connects each login and opens the sign-in page automatically.
Connect NinjaTrader 8 Desktop (Windows)
In Settings → Platform Connection, choose NinjaTrader 8 Desktop (Rithmic) in the Set up a platform dropdown.
Click Install AddOn. The app copies its add-on into your NinjaTrader folder for you.
Restart NinjaTrader. It compiles the add-on on startup. In the Control Center's Log tab you should see "Degen Rehab bridge listening".
Back in the app, optionally enter the NinjaTrader account name to watch (leave blank to watch all), then click Connect.
Connect Interactive Brokers (Trader Workstation)
The app talks to Trader Workstation on your own computer, so this is a one-time setup inside TWS, then a single click in the app. Works the same on Mac and Windows, and with a paper account.
In Trader Workstation, open File → Global Configuration.
In the left tree open API → Settings. Tick Enable ActiveX and Socket Clients and make sure Read-Only API is unticked. With Read-Only on, the app can see your trades but can't place your protective stop. Note the Socket port: paper TWS uses 7497, live TWS 7496 (IB Gateway: 4002 / 4001).
Scroll down on that same page to Trusted IPs, click Create, and add 127.0.0.1. This stops TWS from asking you to approve the connection every time the app starts.
In the left tree open API → Precautions and tick Bypass Order Precautions for API Orders. Without this, TWS holds every order the app places behind a confirmation window, including the protective stop, until you click Yes.
Click OK. Then in the app, Settings → Platform Connection, choose Interactive Brokers, enter the port if it isn't the paper default, and click Connect. The status turns green and reads Connected.
If you see this window in TWS, click Yes. It means step 4 was skipped: TWS is asking whether to let the app's orders through without a confirmation each time. Answering Yes does the same thing as the Precautions setting.
Keep TWS open while you trade. The connection is local: close TWS and it drops, and the app locks trading down until it's back. There is no morning sign-in; the app reconnects by itself whenever TWS is running.
Map your accounts
The app links live trades to your accounts by the platform account name you entered for each account, for example APEX-123456. It must match exactly what your platform shows.
If a trade comes in on an account the app does not recognise, a banner appears in Settings and the Accounts page shows a "Detected on your platform" card. Click Add next to the name and the app creates the account for you, copying the limits from your first account.
What connected enforcement looks like
Your platform stays open. Charts and order entry are never closed.
While trading is blocked (ritual not done, cooldown, outside hours, or a daily limit hit), any new trade is closed the moment it fills and you get a big on-screen notice saying why.
Every trade you open gets a protective stop placed at the exchange, at the price where your remaining daily loss runs out. Remove or move it and the app puts it back once with a warning. A second time closes the trade and locks that account for the day.
The app never opens trades. It only closes positions, cancels resting orders, and places that one stop.
The ritual's connection step and the Dashboard both refuse to unlock trading until every login you set up is connected. That is deliberate. Trading without the connection means trading without your rules.
The ritual will not continue until every platform you set up is connected.
