Open source · Apache-2.0 · by CodeGate Software

Shariah compliance you can audit, not just trust

keel is an open-source engine for spot crypto trading. Before any order is placed, it passes through safety rails no code can override and an asset screen that refuses what is not attested. Everything it enforces is written down — ruling by ruling, with sources — so you can check it yourself.

The honest result, stated first

No shipped rule family is net-positive at the taker fee actually paid on Coinbase (~1.2% per leg). The viable parameter/fee intersection is empty under production-faithful execution — 0 of 90 configurations in one measurement matrix, 0 of 82 in another. Cost is the binding constraint, not signal quality.

The point of this project is the enforcement machinery and the honest measurement of what runs through it — not a claim of profit. Every result is compared against a simple buy-every-period (DCA) benchmark, and the reference rules currently do not beat it after fees. We would rather you know that on the front page than discover it yourself.

Read the experiment record Read the announcement

  • Screening that fails closed

    Market facts are computed; Shariah classifications are attested by a human — with a source and a name — never inferred from price data. An asset without an attestation is rejected, not passed by default.

  • Eighteen rails no order can skip

    Spend caps, drawdown breakers, exposure limits, no-martingale, feed-staleness checks, a fail-closed kill-switch — plus the fiqh-derived ones: the venue subscription attestation and the constructive-possession (qabd) check that an asset which cannot be withdrawn may not have been validly possessed.

  • Gates that refuse to flatter

    A rule walks candidate → paper → live. Promotion clears performance floors and an overfitting check (PBO/CSCV) — a rule that looks brilliant on one in-sample parameter set is exactly what the second gate exists to be suspicious of.

The engine's boundary, in its own words

keel is not a fatwa engine. It is an enforcement engine for a ruling you supply.

keel never derives a Shariah classification from market data. You record one — with a source and an attributed name — and keel enforces it deterministically. The ruling lives in your attestation, not in the code, so two operators following different schools get different answers from the same code, by design.

No scholarly review of keel's fiqh basis has occurred. The basis is one operator's sourced reading, published as a document precisely so it can be audited and challenged — and each operator is responsible for their own attestations.

How compliance works, in plain terms →

Scholarly review: not reviewed — an open question, by design

The fiqh basis states plainly what a scholarly review would cover and what it would and would not signify. Until someone walks that path, the status is: not reviewed.

Read the fiqh basis →

Where next?