Firefly III MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol server that gives an AI assistant access to your own Firefly III instance — 152 operations behind 5 scoped tools, with reading, writing and deleting kept as three separate, explicitly-authorized surfaces instead of one tool that can do all three.

Türkçe: README.tr.md

• "What did I spend the most on last month?"

• "Find uncategorised transactions from August and suggest categories."

• "Show me subscriptions whose amount went up."

Everyone runs this against their own Firefly instance with their own token — there is no hosted backend or relay in between.

Listed in the official MCP Registry as io.github.YakupEmreYerli/mcp-firefly-iii, on Glama, and in Firefly III's own third-party apps documentation. Every release is built and published by CI from a tagged commit, with npm provenance attesting that the tarball came from this repository.

Demo

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4866f13e-ff09-43b0-b99c-2b4789a30224

38-second demo: ask a financial question, read the answer through MCP, preview a change with dry_run, approve it, and write it back to Firefly III. Recorded against a synthetic instance — all financial data shown is fabricated.

Related MCP server: Firefly III MCP Server

Features

• 5 meta-tools, not 152. firefly_query, firefly_mutate, firefly_destructive, plus firefly_list_operations and firefly_get_schema for discovery — a typed registry maps every Firefly endpoint onto these instead of flooding the model's tool list.

• dry_run on every write, returning the exact request — resolved record IDs included — without sending it.

• Bulk writes can't run blind. Filter-driven updates require max_matches and refuse an incomplete scan before the first write; multi-split transaction groups are rejected outright rather than risk folding their amounts together.

• Read/write/destructive are separately scoped and enforced, not just annotated — over stdio by the Firefly token, over HTTP by OAuth scope or a static token.

• Embedded OAuth 2.1 authorization server for Claude web, Claude mobile, and ChatGPT — no separate Keycloak or Authentik install.

• Docker images for linux/amd64/linux/arm64, and a self-checking documentation pipeline that keeps the tool catalogue in sync with the code.

• It tells you when it is out of date. Once a day it checks whether a newer version exists and, if so, says so once — a line on stderr, a sentence beside the next answer. MCP_UPDATE_CHECK=false turns it off.

Prerequisites

• A running Firefly III instance and a Personal Access Token (Firefly III → Options → Profile → OAuth → Create New Personal Access Token)

• Node.js 20.6+, unless you're using Docker

Usage

1. stdio (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor)

Let setup do it — it asks for your Firefly III address and token, checks that they actually work, then configures Claude Code and Claude Desktop if it finds them: npx -y @yakupemreyerli/firefly-mcp setup. For any other client it prints the configuration to paste.

By hand, Claude Code:

claude mcp add firefly --env FIREFLY_API_URL=your-firefly.example --env FIREFLY_API_TOKEN=your-token -- npx -y @yakupemreyerli/firefly-mcp

By hand, Claude Desktop / Cursor / other clients — add to the MCP config file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "firefly": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@yakupemreyerli/firefly-mcp"],
      "env": { "FIREFLY_API_URL": "your-firefly.example", "FIREFLY_API_TOKEN": "your-token" }
    }
  }
}

2. Remote HTTP with a static token

For n8n, automation, or any caller that can't drive a browser-based OAuth flow. Set MCP_HTTP_TOKEN in .env, then run npx -y -p @yakupemreyerli/firefly-mcp firefly-mcp-http. Every request to /mcp must carry Authorization: Bearer <token> — one token, full access, no per-connection scoping.

3. Remote HTTP with OAuth (Claude web, Claude mobile, ChatGPT)

None of these clients can hold a static token, and none of them can spawn a local process — they connect to a public HTTPS URL and expect OAuth. With MCP_AUTH_PASSWORD set, this server is the OAuth 2.1 authorization server: it handles client registration, PKCE and token exchange itself, so there is no Keycloak, no Google sign-in, and no token to copy anywhere.

Step 1 — give the server a public HTTPS address. Cloudflare Tunnel is the easiest route for a home server (no port forwarding, no certificate); Caddy or Traefik work on a VPS. compose.example.yml ships cloudflare and caddy profiles for exactly this. Say the result is https://mcp.example.com.

Step 2 — configure .env:

MCP_AUTH_PASSWORD=a-strong-password-of-at-least-12-characters
MCP_RESOURCE_URL=https://mcp.example.com
MCP_AUTH_STATE_DIR=/data/firefly-mcp-auth

MCP_RESOURCE_URL is the external origin, character for character, with no path — not the internal http://firefly-mcp:3000, and not the /mcp connection URL. A mismatch fails the token audience check and the client only reports "invalid token". MCP_AUTH_STATE_DIR must sit on a persistent volume (compose.example.yml mounts one) or every restart de-authorizes every client.

Step 3 — start it and verify:

docker compose -f compose.example.yml up -d
curl https://mcp.example.com/health     # {"ok":true,"auth":"oauth-builtin"}

If auth says bearer instead, the password never reached the process and the client will report that the server doesn't support OAuth.

Step 4a — Claude (web, Desktop, iOS/Android). Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, URL https://mcp.example.com/mcp. Leave the authentication choices as detected — Claude probes the server and picks the flow it supports. The connector then works on every Claude surface you're signed into, phone included.

Step 4b — ChatGPT. In the custom connector / MCP screen, enter the same https://mcp.example.com/mcp and choose OAuth as the authentication method.

Step 5 — enter the password. A Firefly login screen opens in the browser; type MCP_AUTH_PASSWORD. That one screen is the whole decision — the connection is granted all three scopes (firefly:read, firefly:write, firefly:destructive), whatever the client itself asked for. There is no second consent screen: whoever holds the password could have ticked every box on it. To hand out a connection that genuinely cannot write, give the server a read-only Firefly Personal Access Token instead.

Full TLS recipes and troubleshooting: docs/oauth.md.

4. Docker

Recommended for either HTTP mode above:

cp .env.example .env    # fill in the values for the mode you need
docker compose -f compose.example.yml up -d

Swap build: . in compose.example.yml for image: ghcr.io/yakupemreyerli/mcp-firefly-iii:latest to use the prebuilt image — pin a version tag, not :latest, for anything you depend on. Single container without Compose: docker run -d --env-file .env -p 3000:3000 ghcr.io/yakupemreyerli/mcp-firefly-iii:latest. It refuses to start without one of the two auth modes above, and /mcp needs TLS in front — compose.example.yml has optional cloudflare and caddy profiles for that. /health is open, for container probes.

Configuration

Every variable, including HTTP and OAuth mode: docs/configuration.md.

Tools

The split is enforced, not just advertised — a delete reached through firefly_query is refused, and a connection granted only firefly:read never even sees the two writing tools. Responses are trimmed before they reach the model: empty and null attributes are always dropped, and every execution tool takes a fields list — roughly a 90% cut on a large transaction list. Full reference: docs/api/operations.md.

Security

This server never sends your data to a third party, but it doesn't control what the AI client or model you connect it to does with a response once it has one. Full threat model: SECURITY.md. Found a vulnerability? Report it privately there.

Documentation

Development

git clone https://github.com/YakupEmreYerli/mcp-firefly-iii.git && cd mcp-firefly-iii
npm install
cp .env.example .env    # fill in your instance
npm test                # mocked; never touches a live instance
npm run build
npm run check           # read-only connection check against .env

Tests are mocked and never reach the network. npm run smoke:live is a maintainer tool that walks every read operation against the instance in .env; it is read-only and not part of the published package. Bug reports and pull requests are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.