Define the gold reference, quotation currency and unit that the application actually needs.
XAU/USD normally expresses a gold-versus-dollar reference, while futures and broker CFDs have their own contract details. Keep product identifiers separate and verify the agreed unit instead of applying an unlabelled conversion to a numeric price.
Select bid/ask snapshots for valuation, streaming observations for live screens or historical bars for charts. Confirm timestamps, precision and session rules for each workflow, and distinguish source prices from any broker adjustment.
Bring the proposed instrument list, source documentation and consumer workflow to a technical discussion. The agreed integration specification defines coverage, fields, usage permissions and acceptance tests.
| Instrument scope | Identify the exact underlying, source identifier, quote currency and intended use. |
|---|---|
| Consumer workflow | List trading platforms, charts, risk tools and applications that need the output. |
| Delivery contract | Agree protocol, quote fields, timestamps, source status and recovery behaviour. |
| Production review | Confirm source rights, integration ownership, test evidence and commercial scope. |
For precious metals, define who consumes the prices and what each system needs to reconstruct a usable quote. An application dashboard, broker platform and historical process can require different delivery rules even when they share one normalized instrument model.
{
"type": "quote",
"symbol": "XAUUSD",
"bid": "100.00",
"ask": "100.10",
"source_time": "2026-10-18T12:00:00.000Z",
"received_at": "2026-10-18T12:00:00.012Z",
"source_id": "example-source",
"status": "illustrative"
}Illustrative engineering example, not live prices or a published API contract. Confirm field names and delivery rules during integration.