Configuration

Table of Contents

• Pine inputs
• Strategy declaration overrides
• Runtime knobs
  • Bar magnifier
  • Trace recording
  • Trade start gate
• Configuration is per-handle

PineForge exposes three configuration surfaces:

1. Pine inputs — anything declared with input.*() in the source script.
2. Strategy declaration overrides — fields of the script's strategy(...) call.
3. Runtime knobs — bar magnifier, trade-start gating, trace recording.

All three are set on the strategy handle, before calling run_backtest. Calls made after a run are queued for the next run.

Pine inputs

strategy_set_input(s, "Length",          "21");
strategy_set_input(s, "Use Trend Filter","true");
strategy_set_input(s, "Source",          "close");

Pine type	Serialized form
int	decimal string, e.g. "21"
float	decimal string, e.g. "0.04" (use . always — no locale)
bool	"true" / "false"
string	the string itself (no quoting)
source	one of "open", "high", "low", "close", "hl2", "hlc3", "ohlc4", "hlcc4"
color	hex "#RRGGBB" or "#AARRGGBB"
timeframe	TV-style — "1", "5", "60", "1D", "1W"

The key is the input's title, exactly as it appears in the Pine title= argument. If no title was given, the runtime falls back to the variable identifier.

Note

Unknown keys are silently accepted and ignored. This lets harnesses set a superset of inputs across multiple strategies without per-strategy gating.

Strategy declaration overrides

strategy_set_override(s, "initial_capital",        "100000");
strategy_set_override(s, "commission_value",       "0.04");
strategy_set_override(s, "commission_type",        "percent");  /* or "cash_per_contract", "cash_per_order" */
strategy_set_override(s, "slippage",               "1");
strategy_set_override(s, "default_qty_value",      "100");
strategy_set_override(s, "default_qty_type",       "percent_of_equity"); /* or "fixed", "cash" */
strategy_set_override(s, "pyramiding",             "0");
strategy_set_override(s, "process_orders_on_close","true");
strategy_set_override(s, "close_entries_rule",     "FIFO"); /* or "ANY" */

These mirror the parameters of Pine's strategy(...) declaration. Setting them via the C ABI overrides the script-defined defaults for this run.

Runtime knobs

Bar magnifier

Configured per-call on run_backtest_full:

run_backtest_full(s, bars, n, "5", "60",
                  /*magnifier=*/1, /*samples=*/4,
                  PF_MAGNIFIER_ENDPOINTS, &report);

Volume-weighted sampling is a separate sticky toggle:

strategy_set_magnifier_volume_weighted(s, 1);

See Bar magnifier for the sampling model.

Trace recording

strategy_set_trace_enabled(s, 1);

Captures // @pf-trace name=expr pragma values per bar into pf_report_t::trace. Zero-cost when disabled. See Report schema § Trace records.

Trade start gate

/* Only allow strategy.entry/exit/close/order to fire on or after this bar. */
strategy_set_trade_start_time(s, 1700000000000LL);

Earlier bars still execute user code and warm TA / series state. Only order commands are ignored. Use this to leave room for indicators to stabilize before trades start.

Configuration is per-handle

Configuration values stick to the handle, not the run. They apply to every run_backtest on that handle until overwritten or strategy_free is called.

For parameter sweeps, create a fresh handle per run — a handle's trade history accumulates across runs (see Lifecycle):

for (int len = 10; len <= 30; len += 2) {
    pf_strategy_t s = strategy_create(NULL);
    strategy_set_override(s, "initial_capital", "100000");
 
    char buf[16]; snprintf(buf, sizeof buf, "%d", len);
    strategy_set_input(s, "Length", buf);
 
    pf_report_t r = {0};
    run_backtest(s, bars, n, &r);
    report_free(&r);
    strategy_free(s);
}