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Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

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Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#71

Post by 2ndorderthought »

mbm wrote: post #68
2ndorderthought wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's read only until they get hacked like dozens of other ai start ups are... I seriously hope this doesn't happen by the way but yea. This is not for me.

The awesome thing is, if it's something you're interested in, you can basically set this up yourself -- a local AI model, some browser automation, and it does mostly work ! It's just a pain to keep running. But it's definitely doable.

I am the kind of geek who doesn't even want a second record of their finances around. My physical bank statements even have a procedure for how long they live until being shredded.

If I were interested in this though, yea, a local LLM would be the only way.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#72

Post by mbm »

2ndorderthought wrote: post #71
mbm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The awesome thing is, if it's something you're interested in, you can basically set this up yourself -- a local AI model, some browser automation, and it does mostly work ! It's just a pain to keep running. But it's definitely doable.

I am the kind of geek who doesn't even want a second record of their finances around. My physical bank statements even have a procedure for how long they live until being shredded. If I were interested in this though, yea, a local LLM would be the only way.

I respect that 100%. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#73

Post by angoragoats »

mbm wrote: post #44
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…

Hear you 100%. It felt very uncomfortable for me the first time I used it, as well. The problem is that there sort of isn't a better way right now in the US, and for now, Plaid or a Plaid-like competitor is the safest way. Eventually, it would be awesome if there were clean, open APIs, and standards around this, but for now, it's the best we have. The alternative of course for the DIY-er is some sort of browser autom…

> The problem is that there sort of isn't a better way right now in the US, and for now, Plaid or a Plaid-like competitor is the safest way

So then the correct thing to do is to not automate this, until there is a better way. Why would you willingly give your bank credentials to a third party just so you can get some summary emails?? It doesn’t make any sense.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#74

Post by aleksiy123 »

jnfr wrote: post #46
aleksiy123 wrote: post #16

I’m Canadian and have been using https://lunchmoney.app/ for tracking with Plaid integrations. They have an api and I got llm to write a CLI for it. That way agent can pretty much pull the data it needs or wants. One thing I also had it do is build up a series of rules for tagging which then I run a cron for once a day. Every once in a while I just ask it to look over the rules and make new ones for uncategorized tra…

Awesome to hear! (founder of Lunch Money here :)- thanks for the shoutout!)

Of course it’s a great product and has been serving me well ever since intuit killed mint.

I think my only request is to expose the rules engine as a declarative api in v2.

I ended up locally caching the transactions data, using cel/aip-160 as a rules engine then having the script apply the results on the data.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#75

Post by DANmode »

mbm wrote: post #65

In case anyone is interested, just wanted to share a few high level details about our infra/security setup. - Backend & CLI are both strictly linted Rust. The webapp runs on Axum (Rust web framework), and connects to Postgres via sqlx. - Financial read-only. There's no transfer, pay, or send tool in the product. Nothing in the AI surface can move money. - We request transactions, investments, and liabilities from Pla…

If you’re going to downvote someone sharing technical details of their product,

or worse, a Show HN?,

at least indicate why.

It feels like all I’ve done today is Vouch comments that have no indicated reason for being Dead.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#77

Post by 2ndorderthought »

mbm wrote: post #72
2ndorderthought wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the kind of geek who doesn't even want a second record of their finances around. My physical bank statements even have a procedure for how long they live until being shredded. If I were interested in this though, yea, a local LLM would be the only way.

I respect that 100%. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

<3

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#78

Post by fsckboy »

ForHackernews wrote: post #60
mbm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the question isn't whether the user is trusting Plaid with too much access, the question is whether Plaid is trusting these apps with too much.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#80

Post by alex-norcliffe »

We (Era Finance) have a solution for exactly this - Era Context, an MCP for connecting any compatible agent to your personal finances - https://era.app

It's focussed on read tools at the moment, but we have write tools coming (money transfers, debt paydown, etc)

Check it out and let me know if you'd like to see any particular features landing - just email alex at the above domain name.

For background context I'm Alex the CEO, I'm ~new to HN but was the former head of web presence at stripe.com and was at Square / CashApp before that. Hi!

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