Playbooks
Document your trading strategies and tag trades with them to see which setups actually pay off.
A playbook is a documented strategy or setup — entry criteria, exit criteria, timeframes, market context, and a screenshot gallery for visual reference. When you log a trade, you can tag it with a playbook, and Flow tracks performance per playbook so you can see which strategies are working and which aren't.
The two-pane layout
A list on the left, a detail panel on the right.
The Playbooks page is a sidebar list plus a detail panel. The list shows every playbook you've created with quick stats (P&L, win rate, trade count) when there's data to show. Clicking a row opens its detail panel.
The selected playbook's ID is reflected in the URL — so you can deep-link to a specific playbook. The Dashboard's Playbook Performance widget uses these direct links.
Creating a playbook
Click the + button at the top of the sidebar to open the new-playbook dialog.
Only one field is required — Name. Everything else is optional. Fill in what's useful for your strategy:
| Field | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Name | Short label, max 100 characters |
| Description | A sentence or two describing the strategy |
| Timeframes | Multi-select chips — the timeframes you trade this setup on |
| Market Context | Multi-select chips — Trending, Ranging, Choppy, News-driven |
| Time of Day | Multi-select chips — Pre-market, Open, Mid-day, Close, After-hours |
| Confluences | Free-form chip list — type and press Enter. Up to 20 entries |
| Preferred Symbols | Comma-separated list of symbols you trade this on |
| Risk % per Trade | Risk allocation for this setup (0-100) |
| Entry Criteria | Free-text rules for taking the trade |
| Exit Criteria | Free-text rules for closing the trade |
| Active | Inactive playbooks don't appear in the dropdown when logging a trade |
The detail panel
Two tabs — Overview and Gallery.
Overview
The Overview tab renders whatever you've filled in: entry criteria, exit criteria, confluences, market context, time of day, and risk %. Empty sections don't render — a brand new playbook just shows “No criteria defined yet. Click Edit to add entry and exit rules.”
Above the tabs, a stats row shows Total P&L, Trades, Win Rate, Avg P&L, and Profit Factor across every trade tagged with this playbook.
Gallery
Upload chart screenshots for visual reference. The recommended workflow: annotate the chart in your charting tool, then upload the screenshot here.
Each image can have an optional caption and timeframe. Click any image to open a lightbox with keyboard navigation — arrow keys to page through, Escape to close.
Header actions
- Toggle active — flip Active / Inactive without opening the editor
- Edit — pencil icon, reopens the dialog you used to create the playbook
- Delete — trash icon. Permanent; also deletes all gallery screenshots
The 'Consider retiring' warning
An automatic flag for playbooks that have proven they don't work.
When a playbook has 20 or more closed trades and a negative expectancy, Flow shows an amber Consider retiring badge next to its name. The 20-trade threshold is high enough to rule out small-sample noise. If the warning persists, the math is saying the strategy isn't pulling its weight — time to cut it or revise it.
Tagging trades
Playbooks become useful when you actually attach them to trades.
When logging a trade in the Journal, the Pre-Trade phase has an optional Playbook dropdown. It only shows your active playbooks. Once tagged:
- The trade contributes to that playbook's stats
- Reference images from the playbook's gallery preview inline below the dropdown
- You can later filter the Trades table by this playbook
Where else playbooks show up
Stats roll up to the Dashboard and Journal.
- The Dashboard's Playbook Performance widget compares stats across all playbooks side by side. Sort by Total P&L, Win Rate, or Trade Count. Each row links back to the playbook's detail panel.
- The Journal's filter bar has a Playbook filter — narrow the trade table to one playbook's trades.
- The Journal's table has an optional Playbook column (toggle via the gear icon).