You Need A Budget (YNAB) MCP
Server Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
No arguments | |||
Instructions
Guidance the server publishes about itself, which clients place ahead of the tool catalog so the model reads it before choosing anything.
This server publishes no instructions, or was last inspected before Glama recorded them.
Capabilities
Server capabilities have not been inspected yet.
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| list-budgetsB | List all available YNAB budgets |
| list-accountsB | List all accounts for a given budget. Useful for getting account IDs for other tools. |
| list-transactionsB | List transactions for a specific account or an entire month. Use this to investigate spending patterns identified in the financial overview. |
| list-categoriesA | List all categories, groups, and their budgeting details for a given budget. Call this before managing budgeted amounts to see what's available and what's already been allocated. |
| list-payeesB | List all payees for a given budget. Good for finding payee IDs or identifying messy payee data that needs to be merged. |
| manage-payeesA | Merge multiple payee names into a single name. Use this to clean up payee data, for example, by renaming 'STARBUCKS #123' and 'Starbucks Coffee' to just 'Starbucks'. |
| manage-budgeted-amountC | Assign a budgeted amount to a category or move money between categories for a specific month. This is the primary tool for allocating funds. |
| bulk-manage-transactionsC | Create, update, or delete multiple transactions at once. More efficient than making single changes. |
| list-scheduled-transactionsB | List all upcoming scheduled transactions for a given budget. Useful for forecasting upcoming bills. |
| manage-financial-overviewB | Get, update, or refresh a high-level financial overview. This is the best starting point for any analysis, providing account balances, goals, and important context notes. |
| manage-scheduled-transactionA | Create, update, or delete a single scheduled (recurring) transaction. Use this to manage recurring bills or savings transfers. |
| lookup-entity-by-idA | Look up the name and details of a specific account, category, or payee by its ID. A utility for when you have an ID but need the full context. |
| get-month-infoA | Get detailed budget information for a single month, including age of money and total amounts budgeted, spent, and available. Call this to check the monthly budget's status before making changes. |
| lookup-payee-locationsC | Look up geographic locations associated with a payee. |
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No prompts | |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
TDQS
Scored across 14 tools
Most tools have distinct purposes, such as list-accounts for accounts and list-categories for categories, but some overlap exists. For example, manage-financial-overview provides high-level context that might be partially covered by get-month-info for monthly details, which could cause minor confusion in tool selection. However, descriptions clarify their specific uses, reducing ambiguity.
Tool names follow a highly consistent verb-noun pattern with hyphenation, such as list-accounts, get-month-info, and manage-budgeted-amount. All tools adhere to this convention, making them predictable and easy to understand. There are no deviations or mixed styles like camelCase or snake_case.
With 14 tools, the set is well-scoped for budget management, covering key operations like listing resources, managing transactions, and handling budgets. Each tool serves a clear purpose, such as list-transactions for analysis and manage-scheduled-transaction for recurring bills, without being excessive or too sparse for the domain.
The tool surface provides comprehensive coverage for YNAB's budget management domain, including CRUD operations for transactions, budgets, and payees, along with utilities like lookup-entity-by-id. It supports core workflows from listing resources to managing financial data, with no obvious gaps that would hinder agent performance.