Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances? • Hacker News Board

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#51

Post by mbm » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:42 PM UTC

apsurd wrote: post #47

mbm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome feedback. Agree 100% with this. I guess a couple comments: - We have a built-in CSV export tool in beta right now for cash transactions, and plan to add this for other datasets as well. You should be able to download your data when you want it. It's yours. - Yes, tracking is great, but it also has a dark side. My sort of vision, at least for what I want, is less of a gamified finance tracker and more of an am…

> As a programmer, it just feels liberating to get the data out of some closed banking app and into a space I'm comfortable in. Quote of the week for me. well said. ~15 years ago I fumbled around with web programming basically because I never learned how to use excel in school. Nerded out with css, html, forms, then php and mysql to script together an unbelievably worse version of what a spreadsheet could do, but it…

Thanks for sharing your story!

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#52

Post by dyogenez » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

cowlby wrote: post #20

I recently did this for myself using https://tiller.com/ to sync checking/credit-card transactions to a Google Sheets spreadsheet. Then a GitHub action mirrors the spreadsheet to a free Supabase database. From there, Supabase MCP or psql gives Claude/Codex access to the transactions/balances for english queries. Really impressed with their ability to find subscription patterns, abnormal patterns, etc. Also to predict…

Another +1 for Tiller!

I'm doing something similar with Tiller (which I've been using since Mint was acquired by Intuit).

It's neat to see how OP did this using a Claude Routine though. My version locally uses a local qwen model + an API key (annoyingly created using OAuth) with sheets access. A Claude Routine would've been significantly easier

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#53

Post by kylecazar » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

cantrevealname wrote: post #40

To everyone who doesn’t know how Plaid works: You give your banking username and password directly to Plaid, and it keeps it (so it can continue to login). I don’t understand how anyone is OK with this. It goes against every security principle and it’s against the terms and conditions of every bank. I realize that almost no bank provides a secure and proper API to get info and/or to transfer funds, but Plaid’s soluti…

I don't think this is still the case?

When we built our Plaid integration it used OAuth and a redirect. Plaid just got an access token, you enter your user/pass at bank side.

Edit: Seems like smaller/local banks are probably the ones that won't support OAuth. We didn't support those.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#54

Post by mbm » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:46 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #50

mbm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's read only, we can't move money. And I totally hear you -- we had this happen in our family as well, and it was really sad. Security is a massive priority for us, but it's always going to be a cost-benefit analysis for each person. Happy to share more about our infra in a follow-up post.

What makes it read-only? You told the AI "don't"?

Actually, it's deterministic -- our product doesn't move money, so when the user gives us access through Plaid, we're only getting read-level permissions. We actually don't even get full account numbers.

A company working with Plaid has to request separate product "scopes" through Plaid in order to be able to move money.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#55

Post by mbm » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:47 PM UTC

dyogenez wrote: post #52

cowlby wrote: post #20

I recently did this for myself using https://tiller.com/ to sync checking/credit-card transactions to a Google Sheets spreadsheet. Then a GitHub action mirrors the spreadsheet to a free Supabase database. From there, Supabase MCP or psql gives Claude/Codex access to the transactions/balances for english queries. Really impressed with their ability to find subscription patterns, abnormal patterns, etc. Also to predict…

Another +1 for Tiller! I'm doing something similar with Tiller (which I've been using since Mint was acquired by Intuit). It's neat to see how OP did this using a Claude Routine though. My version locally uses a local qwen model + an API key (annoyingly created using OAuth) with sheets access. A Claude Routine would've been significantly easier

Routines are so fun to work with. It's almost too easy to spin a new one up. A little worried about when I get past the 15 routines limit, though. Then it goes into "extra usage" land.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#56

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

mbm wrote: post #42

irishcoffee wrote: post #37

My spouse was almost scammed out of 25k the other day, by a person. There is no way in fucking hell I'll let an "agent" touch my finances. That is madness.

It's read only, we can't move money. And I totally hear you -- we had this happen in our family as well, and it was really sad. Security is a massive priority for us, but it's always going to be a cost-benefit analysis for each person. Happy to share more about our infra in a follow-up post.

[deleted]

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#57

Post by id00 » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

When I was trying to use Claude to analyze my past transactions, I found out that it was constantly hallucinating charges, sometimes adds new, double counts and etc.

When I'm dealing with my finances the 95% time Claude is correct and doesn't hallucinate is not enough as I have to be vigilant and review its work all the time. So it kinda makes it worthless in this case for me

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#58

Post by mbm » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #31

avocabros wrote: post #25

This seems like a solution looking for a problem. https://tiller.com/ works great and lets you do whatever calculations you want in a spreadsheet - and, bonus, it's never going to hallucinate. I don't quite understand the desire to have these verbose summaries that you have to read from LLMs. You'll notice anomalies if you just categorize each of your expenses every so often (easy with Tiller).

It's not the summaries. It's the ease by which LLMs can ingest and combine various data sources.

This. It's really cool to weave other data sources into your data.

I recently needed to set up some calendar events on certain dividend days, but of course, didn't know what those dividend dates actually were. So we used the MCP connector to retrieve our current Vanguard holdings, had GPT-Pro do web research to pull all the dates, and then created calendar events from that. Worked well.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#59

Post by mbm » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:56 PM UTC

id00 wrote: post #57

When I was trying to use Claude to analyze my past transactions, I found out that it was constantly hallucinating charges, sometimes adds new, double counts and etc. When I'm dealing with my finances the 95% time Claude is correct and doesn't hallucinate is not enough as I have to be vigilant and review its work all the time. So it kinda makes it worthless in this case for me

Give GPT in Codex a try! I agree, Claude still seems quite prone to hallucinations, especially with incomplete or limited datasets.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#60

Post by ForHackernews » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

mbm wrote: post #54

ForHackernews wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it read-only? You told the AI "don't"?

Actually, it's deterministic -- our product doesn't move money, so when the user gives us access through Plaid, we're only getting read-level permissions. We actually don't even get full account numbers. A company working with Plaid has to request separate product "scopes" through Plaid in order to be able to move money.

I'm not that familiar with Plaid, but if it works like Yodlee, users have to hand over their credentials so there's no real security, it's just that their scraper is designed to be look not touch.