How to Built an Institutional Options Trades Detector

Most retail options traders know the frustration: you’re long calls, the chart is behaving, and then a large move blows through your position. Only afterward do you realize the options tape was screaming institutional activity for hours before it happened. I spent the last few months building a system to detect this activity in real-time. This post explains how it works, the statistical methods behind it, and how to run it yourself. The code is part of trading-skills, an open source Claude extension for AI-powered options analysis capabilities.