Hobbyists
Free to startRun everything on one machine. Chart live ticks, build dashboards from OpenBB-compatible widgets, and keep your own history instead of renting it.
- Starts with
- A laptop and free data keys
- Adds
- Your own tick history and studies
SecretoftheUniverse.com
The best open-source market tools, joined into one stack your AI agent can run.
We call it vibe integration: take the specialist for each job (OpenBB (now OpenBQ) for a platform, kdb+ for ticks, Delta Lake for history, DuckDB for research, Lightweight Charts for drawing), join them through tested contracts, and let an AI agent install and maintain the result while you approve each change. Built for hobbyists, academics and small investors, from one laptop to a whole lab.
Art’s ChartsSee it: live tick charts and studies
Preview
BDOBBWork it: the desk that holds every widget
Shipping
TemporalDBTrust it: a database for research and investing
In design
One stack. Each layer is useful alone and better together.
Who it’s for
Professional-grade habits, without the professional-grade bill.
The tools trading desks rely on (tick caches, versioned history, reproducible queries) usually come bundled with enterprise contracts. We package the same habits as open-source tools you can run yourself.
Academics
ReproducibleAnswer the referee’s question: what did the data say on that date? TemporalDB is designed to separate when a fact applied, when it was published and when you received it, and to record a receipt for every query run.
- Starts with
- A single-user catalog
- Adds
- Point-in-time replay for a lab
Small investors
No lock-inKeep the OpenBB backends you already use. BDOBB reads them, then adds pivots, calendar-aware time math, pinned and locked widgets, and multi-dashboard workspaces.
- Starts with
- Your existing OpenBB widgets
- Adds
- An analysis desk around them
The tools
Three tools, honestly labelled.
Status chips say what exists today. Shipping means released code. Preview means built and running in our stack, but not yet packaged on its own. In design means an approved architecture with no deployment yet.
BDOBB
Shipping · v10.0.0A desktop and browser dashboard that reads the same OpenBB backends as OpenBB Workspace and Workspace Lite, then adds the analysis desk around them.
- Report-model pivots with linked tables
- Calendar-aware time math for dates and ranges
- Pinned and locked widgets, multi-dashboard workspaces
- A live kdb+ tick cache with standard recovery
TemporalDB
In design · approved 12 Oct 2026A database for research and investing that keeps every captured response, every revision and every query receipt, so a backtest sees only what was knowable at the time.
- Bronze evidence, Silver revisions, Gold current view
- Ask by effective date, publication or local receipt
- Shared query library with frozen executions
- Scales from DuckDB on a laptop to PostgreSQL and worker pools
Art’s Charts
Preview · packaging plannedA full technical charting package on an open rendering canvas: live ticks, studies computed on the server, drawings that survive resizes, and layouts you can save.
- 33 named studies, 12 matched to EODHD values
- Study grammar with business-day windows and time anchors
- Live ticks from kdb+, history from a Delta tick vault
- Six scale-independent drawing tools
Vibe integration
Best of breed, without the integration tax.
Integrated suites are convenient but shallow. Specialist tools are deep but take work to join. An AI agent following a runbook you approve makes the second option practical: it inventories your machine, proposes a plan, previews every change, brings services up one at a time and proves they work.
The companion Substack series, Adventures in OpenBQ, explains how we got here and gives the instructions for each step. Run them by hand, or hand them to an AI agent like Claude Code or Codex. Each installment includes the gotchas, so you don’t waste time debugging. More about the series
- InventoryRead-only look at the machine
- PlanA runbook you approve
- PreviewDry run and checksums
- ApplyOne service at a time
- AcceptEnd-to-end checks or roll back
- MaintainPinned upgrades and recovery drills
Scale path
Start on one machine.
Add capacity, not a new product.
Each step keeps the same dashboards, queries and charts. You change where things run and which free or paid licence you use, not how you work.
1
One laptop
Hobby projects, coursework, a personal portfolio.
2
Home server or NAS
Always-on capture, several devices, a family or a study group.
- BDOBB
- Desktop, browser and iPad clients point at one shared backend.
- TemporalDB
- PostgreSQL catalog plus object storage such as RustFS, so several clients share one lake. Design
- Charts
- The Delta tick vault on object storage; the kdb+ process runs on the server.
3
Team or lab
Shared research, many users, audited replays.
- BDOBB
- Many clients share one query library; widgets bind to a query revision. Design
- TemporalDB
- API server pool and worker pool coordinated through PostgreSQL leases. Design
- Charts
- Commercial kdb+ licence where your use requires one.
Which free kdb+ licence? KX offers KDB-X Community Edition, free for personal and commercial projects with a 16 GB RAM limit for q and a single instance. The older kdb+ Personal Edition is for personal, non-commercial use on up to two computers, with no cloud use. Check the terms against your own use.
Open by default
Built on parts you can inspect, fork and keep.
Our code is Apache-2.0. The building blocks underneath are open source too, with one clearly marked exception.
| Component | Role | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| BDOBB and its openbb-docker backend | Dashboard client; data, tick and study services | Apache-2.0 |
| DuckDB | Query engine for TemporalDB | MIT |
| DuckLake | Catalog and table format for TemporalDB | MIT |
| Delta Lake | Tick vault history for Art’s Charts | Apache-2.0 |
| TradingView Lightweight Charts | Chart rendering canvas | Apache-2.0 |
| kdb+ / KDB-X from KX | Live tick cache | Proprietary, free tiers |
DuckDB is MIT-licensed per the DuckDB FAQ; the DuckLake specification and extension are MIT per ducklake.select; Lightweight Charts is Apache-2.0 per its GitHub repository.
The secret is compounding.
Small, careful habits (keep the evidence, record what you knew, chart what actually traded) add up. Start with one tool and add the next when you need it.