Development Process & Platform Direction

[dthinkr]

Current State

LOBX runs limit order book experiments for academic research. The platform handles multi-participant sessions with configurable market structures, automated trading agents, and full audit logging. It has processed 2200+ markets across multiple experiments.

The Wiki documents the platform specification.

How to Request Changes

All feature requests and bug reports go through Issues.

• Bugs: Open an issue with reproduction steps, browser console output, and the session/market ID. "It didn't work" is not actionable.
• Feature requests: Open an issue describing the research need, not the implementation. Explain what experiment you are trying to run and what the platform currently lacks.
• Do not push directly to main. All changes go through pull requests linked to an issue.

Development Priorities

Current priorities, in order:

1. Experiment reliability -- sessions must not fail mid-run
2. Data integrity -- logs must be complete and correct
3. Researcher-facing usability

Priority is set by the maintainer based on experiment timelines and platform stability.

Roadmap

• Improved experiment orchestration for larger parallel sessions
• Extended market mechanism support for upcoming research designs
• Streamlined deployment and environment configuration

This post will be updated as priorities shift. Questions about specific features belong in Issues, not here.