You've installed FlowSniper. The bot is on your VPS, the license is active, and you're staring at the Command Center. Now what?
This guide takes you from "just installed" to "running with confidence" in your first hour. Pick a track below.
FlowSniper is experimental software for educational and research purposes. Nothing in this guide or the bot itself is financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Trading dTAO involves real risk of total loss. You agreed to the full terms during install — this is the short version: use at your own risk, only deploy what you can afford to lose, and verify the bot's behavior on a small allocation before scaling up.
From your VPS shell, check the service is running:
sudo systemctl status flowsniper
You should see active (running). If you don't, check journalctl -u flowsniper -n 50 for errors and ask in Discord.
flowsniper
You'll see the four modes (Sniper, Sentinel, Designate, Shadow) listed with current status. All four start in ○ DRY dry-run state — they're scanning but not trading yet. Live status shows ● LIVE (filled circle); dry shows ○ DRY (empty circle).
What you'll see:
FlowSniper — Command Center v1.2 ┌─ Operations ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ [1] SNIPER — Active trading. In and out. [2] SENTINEL — Portfolio management. Build and hold. [3] DESIGNATE — Manually mark a target for the bot. [4] SHADOW — Copy trades from targeted wallets. ┌─ Fire control ───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ [5] FIRE CONTROL — Live trading authorization. all dry ┌─ Intelligence ───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ [6] SITREP — Live dashboard across all modes. [7] THREAT BOARD — Live signal scores for all subnets. [8] COMBINED — Full portfolio analytics. [9] WHAT'S HAPPENING — Recent activity across all modes. [10] SIGINT — Streaming bot logs across all modes. [11] NOTIFICATIONS — Discord webhook + alerts. ┌─ Support ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ [12] SERVICE CONTROL — Start, stop, restart. [13] MODES — Enable / disable each mode. [14] ARSENAL — Wallet management for all modes. [15] GLOBAL PARAMETERS — Settings shared across all modes. [16] ADMIN — Backup, restore, purge, blacklist. [Q] Quit
Three things to note:
[5] FIRE CONTROL is in red — the only red item on the menu. That's deliberate. It controls real money. The status next to it says all dry until you start flipping modes live.You bought FlowSniper for a reason. Whatever drew you in — that's where to start.
Still not sure? Here's what each one does in plain English and when it's the right pick:
Don't enable all four on day one. Pick one. Watch it for 3–7 days. Layer in a second mode after you trust the first. The guide assumes one mode for the first week.
Capital caps live in [14] ARSENAL → [7] Budget allocation. Set how much τ each mode is allowed to deploy.
For your first 7 days, allocate budget only to the one mode you're starting with. Leave the other three at 0τ until you've watched the bot operate. You can raise allocations any time — the bot picks up changes on the next sweep cycle.
From the Command Center, hit [5] FIRE CONTROL. This is the live/dry switch for each mode — nothing trades real τ until you flip it.
Toggle your chosen mode from DRY to LIVE. The bot fires on the next sweep cycle (3-5 min). Watch [6] SITREP for live position activity. That's it — you're trading.
Resist the urge to enable all four modes immediately. One mode for a week builds trust. Four modes on day one means you don't know which one's working.
The full first hour. Same flow as Quick Start, but with the reasoning behind each choice and the diagnostics to confirm things are working before you risk capital.
Goal: confirm the bot is healthy, set safety caps, do a dry run. No real trades yet.
Two checks, in order:
sudo systemctl status flowsniper
Service should be active (running). Process ID should be visible.
sudo journalctl -u flowsniper -n 30 --no-pager
Look for the FlowSniper banner, license validation success (✅ License valid), and wallet load. No tracebacks, no ERROR lines. If you see anything that looks broken, drop into Discord with a screenshot — usually a fast fix.
You only need systemctl for the initial install verification. After that, [12] SERVICE CONTROL in the Command Center handles start, stop, restart, and tail-logs without leaving the menu. Restart the service from there after parameter changes, check status at a glance, watch the live log scroll. Cleaner than typing sudo commands.
FlowSniper never sees your wallet keys. They're stored locally on your VPS in standard Bittensor wallet files (the same ones btcli creates), and only your machine ever has access to them. We can't read them. We can't recover them. We can't transmit them off your server. Self-custody is total — that's the whole point of self-hosting.
What this means in practice: if you lose your seed phrase, nobody can help you recover it. Not us, not Bittensor, not anyone. Before you put any τ in the wallet:
btcli.btcli wallet new_coldkey) and use that one. Don't fund a wallet whose seed is lost.Your bot wallet runs on an internet-connected VPS, which is a hot wallet by definition. Anything on it is exposed to whoever can compromise the server. Industry-standard practice: keep your main holdings in cold storage on a separate seed, and fund the bot wallet with only what you're willing to lose to a worst-case server breach. Top up as needed.
Open the menu:
flowsniper
Navigate to [7] THREAT BOARD. This shows you the live signal scores for all 128 subnets right now. You'll see things like:
Watch this for a few minutes. You're calibrating your gut against the bot's signal model. If a subnet shows ENGAGE that you think is junk, that's worth noting; if it shows EVADE on a subnet you love, that's worth noting too. You don't need to act on it — you're just orienting.
Before any mode goes live, set per-mode capital caps in Arsenal:
[14] ARSENAL → [7] Budget allocation → assign τ per mode (Sniper, Sentinel, Designate, Shadow). Each mode gets its own deployment ceiling.
Note: [13] MODES is just enable/disable toggles. [15] GLOBAL PARAMETERS covers scan cadence, RPC endpoint, reserve buffer, and other system-level settings — the reserve buffer (default 0.01τ) is what guarantees the bot never spends your last bit of TAO on gas.
Allocate budget only to the mode you're starting with. Leave the other three at 0τ. Allocate no more than 25% of your wallet to that single mode. You can raise any of these at any time — changes take effect on the next sweep cycle.
You bought FlowSniper for a reason. The mode that drew you in is the right place to start — you'll have the most patience to watch it learn, the clearest mental model for what it should be doing, and the fastest read on whether it's working.
Whichever mode you choose first, leave the other three off for at least 7 days. You'll learn what's working. Adding all four on day one means you can't tell which one's making (or losing) you money.
Goal: take your first real trade and watch the bot manage it.
Each mode has its own settings screen with defaults that work out of the box. You don't need to change anything yet — just look:
Default settings are calibrated for first-week use. Skim them; change nothing yet.
When you do start tweaking parameters (next week, not today), two features make changes lower-stakes:
Pre-trade preview. Change a Sniper Parameter and you see exactly what would change before saving — including a "this would have blocked X of your last 25 entries" line for threshold changes. Confirm with y, cancel with n.
Time-machine undo. [16] ADMIN → [20] Undo recent change keeps the last 20 config changes — settings saves, blacklist edits, applied backtests. Made a mistake? Pick the slot, see the diff, restore. The undo itself takes a snapshot, so you can roll forward again if you change your mind.
You can't accidentally brick your config. Knowing this in advance makes you tweak more confidently when the time comes.
[5] FIRE CONTROL from the Command Center is the master live/dry switch for each mode — this is what arms the bot for real trading. Each mode has its own state:
Find your chosen mode in Fire Control and toggle it from DRY to LIVE. The bot fires on the next sweep cycle (3-5 minutes after toggle). Don't refresh frantically; it's running.
Open [6] SITREP in the menu — it auto-refreshes every 5 seconds. Or in another shell, tail the log:
sudo journalctl -u flowsniper -f
When the bot enters its first position, you'll see something like:
SNIPER ENTRY · SN42 [name] · 0.5τ · entry_mark=0.0234
The Command Center mode row will update from 0 pos to 1 pos. Congratulations — you're trading.
A few things will look weird on day one. They aren't bugs:
[11] NOTIFICATIONS → [2] Test webhook to confirm it's wired.Genuinely broken: tracebacks in the log, "license invalid", "wallet not found", positions stuck for >24h with no movement. Bring those to Discord.
You don't want to be staring at the menu to know when trades fire. Hook up a Discord webhook to get pings.
From your Discord server: Server Settings → Integrations → Webhooks → New Webhook. Copy the URL.
In the FlowSniper menu: [11] NOTIFICATIONS → paste the URL. Test it (the bot sends a test message).
From here on, every entry, exit, and notable event hits your Discord. You can close the menu and check your phone.
Goal: watch the bot operate. Don't change settings. Don't enable more modes. Just observe.
Twice a day is enough. Morning and evening. Each check should take 60 seconds:
[6] SITREP — how many positions are open, total uPnL.[9] WHAT'S HAPPENING — what the bot did since you last checked.If you're checking more often than this, you're not letting the bot do its job. The first 72 hours are about building trust through observation, not through fiddling.
You will see trades you disagree with. The bot will hold longer than you would. The bot will exit faster than you would. This is normal. Your gut is calibrated for one trade at a time; the bot is calibrated for portfolio-level outcomes.
If something looks genuinely wrong (bot stuck on one position, repeated errors, wallet not draining sensibly) — come ask in Discord. If something is just "I would have done it differently" — sit on your hands.
If you ever need to stop the bot immediately: [12] SERVICE CONTROL → Stop, or from a shell sudo systemctl stop flowsniper. Open positions stay open (the bot doesn't fire-sale on shutdown). Restart from the same menu when you're ready.
Goal: by day 7-10 you've seen enough of mode #1 to know if it works. Time to layer in another.
Hit [8] COMBINED for full portfolio analytics. Look at:
If realized + unrealized is positive, the mode is working. If it's flat after a week, that's also fine — some markets just don't give entries. If it's significantly negative AND you've seen 20+ trades, something's miscalibrated — ask in Discord with screenshots.
Pair modes that don't compete for the same trades:
Enable mode #2 the same way you did mode #1: allocate budget for it in [14] ARSENAL → [7] Budget allocation, then toggle it LIVE in [5] FIRE CONTROL. Watch the first few cycles.
Goal: now that you have trade history, the bot can learn from your data.
Once you have ~20+ closed trades, Auto-Tune has enough data to re-fit Sniper's signal weights against your actual results.
Navigate: [1] SNIPER → [9] Recon & Cal → [1] Toggle ON/OFF.
Default frequency is weekly (every 168 hours). The tune runs as a background subprocess — the bot keeps trading while it learns. When complete, you'll see a status line in the Command Center and a summary in [6] Tune history.
Auto-Tune stages proposed changes — it doesn't auto-apply them. Use [V] View last result to see what it wants to change, then [A] Apply last result only if you agree. You can always rollback with [5] Rollback last tune.
If the bot has performed well for two weeks — modest but positive returns, no major surprises — raise your global cap from 25% to 50% of your wallet. Then watch another week before deciding whether to go higher.
There's no prize for deploying 100% of your wallet on day 14. Most experienced operators run at 60-75% deployment indefinitely — the remaining 25-40% sits in TAO as dry powder for opportunities and as buffer against drawdowns.
Now that you understand the bot's defaults, you can start customizing:
The field manual at flowsniper.ai/docs covers every setting in depth. Read it once you've seen the bot operate — the docs make a lot more sense after you've watched real trades fire. For exit-rule specifics across all four modes (every STOP_LOSS, TRAILING_STOP, drift trigger, and parameter default), the dedicated Mode Reference is faster than digging through the field manual.
Real questions get real answers in Discord. Ping #support or #general — usually answered within a few hours by an actual operator, not a bot.