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Glossary

Terms are grouped by topic. See also FAQ, How trading works, and Trading settings.

Account and session​

Account statuses — the main account states shown in the dashboard:

  • Ready (ready) — the account is connected, synchronized, and can trade.
  • Blocked (blocked) — trading stopped, usually because the Steam session expired and auto-reconnect failed. Fix the connection on the System tab and start trading again.
  • Stopped (stopped) — runner is not active. Wallet/inventory sync can still run, but buy/sell jobs are not placed.

maFile — Steam mobile authenticator export. It contains shared_secret for Steam Guard codes and identity_secret for trade confirmations. Required for automated order/listing confirmations.

SDA / mobile confirmation — confirmation through the Steam mobile authenticator. A new listing or order may require confirmation before becoming active.

Auto-reconnect — the system tries to log in again with the maFile when it detects an expired session. If it succeeds, trading continues; if not, the account becomes Blocked.

Proxy — a dedicated HTTP/SOCKS proxy for one Steam account. Local/private/metadata addresses are blocked. Use a separate external proxy per account.

Microban — a temporary soft Steam rate limit caused by too many requests. The runner pauses the account and resumes automatically when the cooldown expires.

Price: net, gross, algorithms​

Net / gross — net is the amount the seller receives after Steam fees; gross is what the buyer pays. SteamMarketRunner shows and submits sell prices as net.

Price algorithm — method for calculating buy/sell prices. The seven algorithms are MS (mode), HG (median daily highs), HSG (minimum daily high), AVG (weighted median), LG (median daily lows), BG (daily lows as buy price), and OG (top buy order from the order book plus offset).

Profit floor (minProfit / profitPercent) — minimum profit below which the trade is not acceptable. profitPercent is a target margin; minProfit is an absolute minimum in major currency units.

Market: order book and snapshots​

Order book / histogram — buy and sell orders grouped by price and volume. Used by OG and live guards.

Price snapshot — periodic market-data capture for an item, collected every 6–8 hours. Accumulated snapshots form the sale graph for price algorithms. Fresh items may need warm-up before prices are stable.

Filters and limits​

Eligibility — whether an item passes profit, liquidity, trend, and safety filters. Only eligible items can trade even if BUY/SELL is enabled.

Depth gate (ordersPlace) — “do not buy if the queue at our price is too deep.” ordersPlace is a percentage of monthly sales: max(1, round(monthlySales × ordersPlace / 100)). 0, -1, or empty disables the gate.

Exposure — total value of open buy orders. It is limited by maxOrderExposure or by the balance-based platform guard.

Wallet balance / fail-closed — if wallet balance is unknown, the buy planner treats it as zero and skips orders. This avoids uncontrolled spending.

Fail-closed — when data is missing or uncertain, the system chooses the safe “do nothing” option.

Maintenance​

Maintenance — hourly operations that keep orders and listings healthy:

  • repricing — remove a listing whose price drifted too far; the next sell cycle relists it;
  • order cancellation — cancel buy orders that no longer make sense;
  • remove from sale after N days — remove listings older than a threshold;
  • competitor undercut response — react when a competitor undercuts your listing.

Holds and items​

Hold / market hold — Steam restriction that prevents selling/trading a recently received item. Held copies are marked 🔒 in the Own column.

Marketable — Steam flag indicating whether a particular asset can be listed. It is per-asset, not just per-item.

Audit log — append-only record of scheduled jobs, placed orders/listings, skipped actions, and safety blocks.

Inspect link / float / stickers — CS2 item metadata. Sticker and float guards use it to avoid selling valuable or out-of-range items when enrichment data is available.

Platform and automation​

Runner — background executor that runs buy/sell/confirmation/sync cycles on a schedule. Start and stop it per account. SteamMarketRunner describes this as an automation runner/tool, not as a stealth, risk-free, or returns-promising bot.

Steam Market bot — a common search phrase for this category. In SteamMarketRunner docs, use it only with risk framing: the product is independent from Valve/Steam, automation is not officially endorsed by Valve, and users remain responsible for account, wallet, and market risk.

Decision job — one background task such as buy analysis, sell analysis, maintenance, session check, or market sync.

Group — a set of items with a shared strategy override. Groups belong to one Steam account.

appid / contextid — Steam game and inventory-context identifiers, for example Rust 252490 with context 2.

Tenant / user — your SteamMarketRunner account. Steam accounts, keys, settings, jobs, and audit logs are scoped to your user.

Service key — API key for agents/integrations. It belongs to your user, is stored as a hash, and is shown in plaintext only once at creation. See Agents and MCP.

Display currency — currency used by the cabinet for cross-account totals. Real trading calculations still use each account’s Steam wallet currency.

Notifications / alerts — Telegram and/or webhook notifications for important account events. Webhook URLs are stored encrypted.