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Installation

WS Terminal ships as a Windows desktop app. No installer wizard, no registry edits — you download a zip, extract it to a folder of your choice, and run the .exe.

This page covers getting the files onto your machine. The first-run wizard walkthrough covers what happens when you actually launch it.

System requirements

Requirement Minimum Recommended
OS Windows 10 64-bit Windows 11 64-bit
RAM 8 GB 16 GB
Disk 500 MB 1 GB free
Internet Reliable broadband Wired connection

Mac and Linux are not supported in v1. A Mac version is on the roadmap.

Step 1 — Make sure prerequisites are in place

Before you install the bot, you should already have:

  1. An IBKR account with futures permissions enabled. If not, see Requirements → Broker Account on the marketing site. Approval takes 1-3 business days, so start it before you install.
  2. An active WS Terminal subscription (Basic or Pro) on Whop. You'll sign in to Whop from inside the bot's first-launch wizard, so make sure you remember which Whop account you used.
  3. Either IB Gateway or TWS installed — see IB Gateway setup or TWS setup. The bot connects through one of these, so it needs to exist on the same machine.

Step 2 — Download

  1. Go to https://github.com/bbenjamin1116/wsterminal-releases/releases/latest
  2. Under Assets, click WSTerminal-X.Y.Z.zip (the version number updates with each release)
  3. Save the zip to your Downloads folder

The download is around 110 MB.

Why GitHub for the download?

GitHub Releases gives us versioned, hash-verified download URLs that we can safely link from the bot's auto-update check. Whop handles your subscription; GitHub hosts the binary. Two clean surfaces, one product.

Step 3 — Extract

  1. Right-click the downloaded zip → Extract All...
  2. Pick a folder to extract to. Recommended: C:\WSTerminal\ (clean, easy to find, no spaces in the path)
  3. After extraction you'll have a WSTerminal folder containing WSTerminal.exe, a static\ folder, a config_product.py file, plus a few hundred supporting files

Don't extract into Program Files

Avoid C:\Program Files\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\ — Windows locks those directories down and the bot can't write its temp files there. Stick with C:\WSTerminal\ or any other normal folder under your user profile.

Step 4 — Run

  1. Open the extracted folder
  2. Double-click WSTerminal.exe

A console window opens with the WS Terminal startup banner. Within a few seconds it'll print:

============================================================
  WS Terminal — W.S. Trading Co.
============================================================
  App directory: C:\WSTerminal
  Dashboard:     http://localhost:8080
  WebSocket:     ws://localhost:8080/ws
============================================================

Open your browser and go to http://localhost:8080.

The dashboard appears with a first-launch wizard overlay — that's where you sign in with Whop and configure the bot. See the first-run wizard walkthrough for what to do next.

Windows Defender / SmartScreen

On first launch, Windows may pop up a "Windows protected your PC" SmartScreen warning. WS Terminal's .exe isn't signed with a paid code-signing certificate (we're working on it), so SmartScreen is cautious about new downloads.

To proceed: click More info → Run anyway. The bot is safe — the warning is purely about the certificate, not the contents. You only see this once per version.

Where the bot stores your data

Most files in the install folder are static (the .exe and its dependencies). Your personal data lives in %APPDATA%\WSTerminal\, which on most machines resolves to C:\Users\<your-username>\AppData\Roaming\WSTerminal\.

This folder contains:

File What it is
license.json Your activated license key
trade_log.json Per-trade history
presets.json Custom presets (Pro only)
acknowledgments.json Audit log of legal acknowledgments
last_active_config.json Active config snapshot

Putting it in %APPDATA% means it survives across .exe updates — when you download a new version of WS Terminal and extract it over the old folder, your license + trade history + presets stay put.

Updating the bot

When a new version ships, the dashboard's About page surfaces a "Check for updates" button. Click it → the bot downloads the new zip URL → unzip into the same folder (or a fresh one), restart.

Detailed walkthrough on the Updates page.

Uninstalling

  1. Close the bot (Ctrl+C in the console window, or close the window)
  2. Delete the C:\WSTerminal folder
  3. To also remove your license + trade log, delete C:\Users\<your-username>\AppData\Roaming\WSTerminal\

That's it — no registry entries, no system services.

Troubleshooting

Double-click does nothing

Try opening Command Prompt, navigate to the install folder (cd C:\WSTerminal), and run WSTerminal.exe from there. If there's an error, it'll print to the console.

Console window opens then immediately closes

Usually means another instance of WS Terminal is already running and holding port 8080. Look for a WSTerminal.exe process in Task Manager → Background processes, end it, then try again.

"DLL not found" or "missing dependency" error on launch

The zip didn't extract cleanly — some of the supporting files are missing. Re-download the zip, extract to a fresh folder, try again.

Browser shows "Can't reach this page" at localhost:8080

Wait a few seconds — the bot takes 2-3 seconds after the console banner appears before the web server is ready. If it's still not loading after 10 seconds, check the console window for error messages.

Where to go next