how i built a trading bot with zero code: 345 wins. 26 losses. 93% win rate. no python knowledge. no stackoverflow. just me talking to an AI agent and iterating. here's the playbook: 1. start with the dumbest version possible. my first prompt was literally "build me a bot that bets on polymarket 15-minute markets" lost $11 on the first trade. but it worked. 2. iterate with real data. every time the bot lost money, i'd paste the trade log into claude and say "why did this lose? fix it." each loss = one prompt = one fix. 3. let the AI audit itself. set up a cron job that runs after every loss. reads the log, analyzes what went wrong, suggests fixes. the AI debugging itself. 4. brain + muscles trick. expensive model for complex decisions. cheap model for monitoring. free rule-based logic for actual trades. went from $300/month to $30/month in AI costs. 5. log everything. every trade, every decision, every loss with full forensics. when i say 345 wins that's from my actual log file. the bot runs 24/7 on a $600 mac mini. trades BTC, ETH, SOL every 15 minutes. the whole point: you don't need to know how to code. you need to know how to operate. describe what you want. test it with real money (small). paste the failures back in. iterate. the bot isn't smart. the process is.