What does the delay parameter do?

On the Chrome extension and the stand-alone runner, delay pauses Autoview before it runs the next part of an alert. You give it a number of seconds, Autoview waits that long, then continues to whatever comes next. A delay line on its own does not place an order; it is purely a pause between the lines around it. On the cloud webhook platform, delay is parsed but not enforced; see below.

Can delay accept a sub-second, decimal value?

Yes, on the surfaces that enforce it. delay=0.5 waits half a second and delay=0.1 waits about a tenth of one, which is useful for nudging two orders just far enough apart. The value has to be positive, though: delay=0 and negative values are treated as invalid and dropped, since a zero-second wait is no wait at all.

Does delay=l work the same as delay?

No, l is a completely different parameter, Leverage, not delay. delay has no short alias; it must be written out as the full word delay=. If you have seen l= used elsewhere in Autoview syntax, that is leverage sizing, unrelated to pausing an alert between lines.

Does a delay in one alert carry over to the next alert?

No, on the surfaces that enforce it. delay only spaces out the lines within the single alert it appears in. It does not schedule anything for a future alert and does not carry over between separate signals. While Autoview is waiting, the lines after the delay are held; that pause blocks only the rest of that one alert.

Does delay work on the cloud webhook platform?

No, not today. The cloud webhook platform accepts a delay value without an error, but no code path on that platform ever pauses, logs, or waits on it -- the next line runs immediately, as if delay were never written. delay only functions on the Chrome extension and the stand-alone runner.

Using the delay parameter

Autoview · Alert syntax · Updated July 11, 2026

delay tells Autoview to wait before it runs the next part of your alert. That is the whole job. You give it a number of seconds, Autoview pauses for that long, then it carries on. It is the tool you reach for when one alert needs to do two or three things in order rather than all at once.

This works on the Chrome extension and the stand-alone runner today. Both wait the full delay before moving to the next line, exactly as described below. The cloud webhook platform parses delay without error but does not act on it: nothing pauses, nothing is logged, and the next line runs immediately. If your alerts go straight to a webhook, not through the extension or the stand-alone runner, a delay line has no effect at all, silently. This is confirmed against the source, not inferred; see "What is certain, and what is not" below.

Here it is in one line:

delay=5

On its own line, that is a five-second pause. Nothing trades. Autoview reads the line, waits five seconds, and moves to whatever comes next.

The rule: delay=seconds

Write delay= followed by a number of seconds. It is a full word, not a single letter, so there is no short alias to memorize. (If you have seen l= around, that one is Leverage, not delay. They are unrelated.)

Three things about the number:

It is in seconds. delay=5 waits five seconds. delay=30 waits half a minute.
Decimals work. Need a sub-second pause? delay=0.5 waits half a second, delay=0.1 waits about a tenth of one. Useful for nudging two orders just far enough apart.
It has to be positive. delay=0 and negative values are treated as invalid and dropped, which makes sense: a zero-second wait is just no wait.

What it actually does

On the Chrome extension and the stand-alone runner: when Autoview hits a delay, it stops on that line and holds for the time you asked. The extension also keeps its worker awake for the full pause, so the wait completes and the lines after it still run. You are not firing-and-forgetting; the rest of the alert is queued behind the pause and runs the moment it ends.

A delay line on its own does not place an order. It is purely a pause between the lines around it. That is the cleanest way to use it, and the one most people want.

On the cloud webhook platform, none of this happens. delay parses cleanly into the command, but nothing reads it again: no pause, no log line, no error. The next line runs immediately, as if delay were never sent.

When to use it

The common case is a single alert that sends more than one order. By default the lines in an alert run back to back, as fast as Autoview can process them. Sometimes you do not want that.

Stagger a scale-in or scale-out. Open part of a position, wait, then add to it, so the two fills are not stacked on the same instant.
Let one action settle before the next. Close a position, pause a beat, then open the other side, rather than sending both at once.
Space out requests. If you are sending several orders in a burst, a short pause between them spreads the load instead of hammering the exchange in one go.

A worked example

Two entries from one alert, spaced three seconds apart:

// first tranche
e=oanda s=EUR_USD b=long q=1%
delay=3
// second tranche
e=oanda s=EUR_USD b=long q=1%

Autoview opens the first 1%, waits three seconds, then opens the second. The two comment lines just label the log so you can read back what happened. Swap the 3 for whatever spacing you want, or use a decimal like delay=0.5 to make it tight.

Things worth knowing

The pause blocks the rest of that alert. While Autoview is waiting, the lines after the delay are on hold. That is the point, but it means a long delay holds up everything below it. Keep waits as short as the job needs.
It runs in sequence, per alert. A delay spaces out the lines within one alert. It does not schedule anything for later or carry over to a future alert.
Positive numbers only. If a delay seems to do nothing on the extension or the stand-alone runner, check the value is above zero and is a plain number of seconds.
It only runs on the Chrome extension and the stand-alone runner. Everything above is accurate for those two surfaces. On the cloud webhook platform, delay is accepted and ignored: the parameter parses cleanly, but nothing pauses and nothing is logged, so the rest of the alert runs immediately. If a delay line seems to have no effect at all, this is the first thing to check.

What is certain, and what is not

Certain from the code: on the Chrome extension and the stand-alone runner, delay takes a number of seconds (decimals allowed), Autoview waits that long before running the next command in the same alert, and a delay line on its own never places an order.

Also certain from the code, and the reason this page carries a warning above: on the cloud webhook platform, the same delay parameter is parsed into the command object and then never read again anywhere in that platform's integration code, and no alert-command execution loop of any kind exists there to read it. A delay line sent to a webhook has zero effect, no error, no log line -- the next command runs exactly as if delay were never written.

Unknown from the code alone: whether the cloud webhook platform is planned to gain equivalent sequencing support in the future. If your integration depends on spacing orders apart in time and you send alerts straight to a webhook rather than through the extension or the stand-alone runner, do not rely on delay to provide that spacing today.

For everything the order lines themselves can do, side, sizing, stops, order type and the rest, see the command reference, or the full alert syntax page.

Read the command reference