BearBreakerEvery BearBreaker setup should start in paper trading. Not because the logic is different in paper mode, but because you need to see it behave before you put capital at risk. The code path is identical. Only the endpoint and the consequences change.
Paper mode lets you watch the priority sequence, the cooldowns, the midpoint targeting, and the TCB adjustments in real market conditions. You can make configuration mistakes without paying for them. You can set a multiplier far too high, watch the system spend its available capital in two days, and learn something that no amount of reading would have taught you.
There are specific things worth watching before you switch. Does the system reconnect cleanly after a restart? Does the ledger match the broker positions at the end of each day? Do cooldowns fire when you expect, and are you comfortable with how long the system sits still between actions? Does the log tell you why nothing happened on a quiet day, or do you find yourself guessing?
Give it long enough to cover more than one kind of market. A week of drifting sideways teaches you almost nothing about a week with a sharp gap down. If you can run paper through a genuinely ugly session, you will have seen the part of the behaviour that matters most, which is what the system does when you would have been tempted to intervene.
Switch to live only when you understand every line of the output and can predict what the next cycle will do before it runs. Start smaller than feels necessary. The system will behave the same way it did in paper. The only thing that changes is the money, and that changes you, not the code.