Personal Finance Tracker MCP Server

An MCP server that lets you log and query your own spending through natural conversation with Claude, instead of a spreadsheet or app.

What it does

You talk to Claude. Claude calls these tools against your local SQLite database:

Monthly cap is set to $2,000 — change MONTHLY_CAP in src/index.ts to match yours.

Related MCP server: ynab-mcp-server

Storage

SQLite, single file (expenses.db), zero setup. Schema is in schema.sql. The database file is gitignored — your spending data stays local.

Setup

npm install
npm run build

Use with Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop MCP config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "finance-tracker": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/finance-tracker-mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. Then just talk to it:

• "I spent $14.50 on lunch today"

• "How much have I spent this month?"

• "Show me all grocery expenses from last week"

• "Delete expense 7"

Design decisions

• SQLite over Postgres: this is a personal, local-only tool. One file, zero infrastructure, easy to back up.

• Free-text categories: no fixed enum. Your categories emerge from how you actually talk about spending. list_categories shows what you've used so far.

• Structured dates on the tool interface: the tool takes ISO dates (YYYY-MM-DD), and the model handles the "last week" → date range translation. Keeps parsing logic out of the server.

• Search tool for ambiguity: when you say "delete the coffee expense" and there are three, search_expenses lets Claude show you the matches and ask which one.

Build Plan

See BUILD_PLAN.md for the phased plan and future ideas (budget alerts, recurring expenses, CSV import, multi-currency).