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Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

driggsby.com

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Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#81

Post by jimmcslim »

thebruce87m wrote: post #43
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 thought that’s what Open Banking was supposed to solve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_banking

And indeed it does, in some markets.

I'll speak to Australia... here we have the legislated Consumer Data Right [1]. This currently puts obligations on banks and energy retailers to make consumer data accessible via an API, via Authorised Data Holders (ADH - the banks and retailers) and Authorised Data Recipients (ADR). However! The major criticism I have of this scheme is that as an individual power user I do not have direct access to these APIs myself. I believe there was originally an intent to support this under the scheme, however due to somewhat legitimate security and access concerns, but also I expect pushback from anyone falling into the ADH category, this is not possible. Setting up an ADR has a not insignificant compliance burden.

However I have recently come across Redbark [2] which is a simple service that has taken on the mantle, and provides a simple sync mechanism for any Consumers that believe they have a Right to their Data. Not affiliated, just a happy customer and I hope that they can make the economics work over the long term.

[1] https://www.cdr.gov.au/

[2] https://redbark.co/

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#82

Post by ryandrake »

angoragoats wrote: post #73
mbm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's total insanity. Can't banks detect and ban Plaid? They should suspend/cancel customers' online access as "compromised" if they detect someone other than the user using the user's credentials to log in. All the security theatrics banks put users through and they don't check for obvious credential leaks?

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#83

Post by mbm »

cowlby wrote: post #48
mbm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so cool! Are you planning to open source any of this? Would love to see how you set everything up, or - maybe most interested in - some of your prompts.

It was all GitHub Spec Kit + Claude Opus tbh. I narrated a couple paragraphs of how I wanted to sync to flow and it knocked it out in one pass practically. Here's the initial spec it created. I started off writing to a local sqlite db instead of Supabase: https://gist.github.com/cowlby/0dbeb52403c3f3c0f1d8122505203... Edit: Here's also the DSL categorization spec. First one was string based, found it cumbersome, so s…

This is really neat, and actually pretty sophisticated. It's like a tiny fintech.

How well has the cash flow prediction worked?

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#84

Post by mbm »

alex-norcliffe wrote: post #80

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…

Thanks for stopping by, Alex! Looks awesome -- good luck to you guys!

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#85

Post by mbm »

aleksiy123 wrote: post #70
mbm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice! What are your main use-cases?

I’m planning to buy an apartment soon so I wanted to be able to chat and say what kind of mortgage can I afford and where should I cut spending. The other use case funnily enough was to ask how much I’m spending on hobby dev. Make sure I’m not getting carried away across llm subscriptions, as well as cloud costs. I think the nice part is once you have the cli you just use the agent in your ide as your chat interface.

Same here -- I mainly use Driggsby from Codex or Claude Code, not ChatGPT or Claude actually.

Thanks for sharing about the apartment -- that's super cool and a really great use-case.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#86

Post by mbm »

angoragoats wrote: post #73
mbm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hear you 100%. It's certainly not for everyone, and I respect your position.

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#87

Post by alex-norcliffe »

mbm wrote: post #84
alex-norcliffe wrote: post #80

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…

Thanks for stopping by, Alex! Looks awesome -- good luck to you guys!

Thanks so much!

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#88

Post by mbm »

ryandrake wrote: post #82
angoragoats wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's total insanity. Can't banks detect and ban Plaid? They should suspend/cancel customers' online access as "compromised" if they detect someone other than the user using the user's credentials to log in. All the security theatrics banks put users through and they don't check for obvious credential leaks?

Just to share -- Most of the largest banks/FIs actually work directly with Plaid.

Here's a quick list of some of the major ones:

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, U.S. Bank, PNC, Capital One, Truist, TD Bank, Charles Schwab, Vanguard, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs Private Wealth, Morgan Stanley, E*TRADE, USAA, M&T, RBC, American Express, Fifth Third, Citizens, KeyBank, Huntington, Ally, Discover, BMO

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#89

Post by mbm »

cowlby wrote: post #41
ariwilson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not just use Plaid under the hood

I've been using Tiller since the pre-AI era. Plaid seems to be more B2B oriented so I haven't looked into it. But eventually yes that would be ideal to own the full pipeline.

Have you tried browser automation?

Re: Could a Claude Code routine watch my finances?

#90

Post by mbm »

thebruce87m wrote: post #43
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 thought that’s what Open Banking was supposed to solve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_banking

Yup, it would be really awesome if this concept was deployed in the US. Unfortunately, open standards don't seem to gain as much traction here outside of the tech industry.
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