fintable-mcp

An unofficial MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for fintable.io, enabling AI assistants like Claude to manage your financial categories, rules, and transactions directly — no more clicking through multi-step wizards.

Note: This is a community project, not officially supported by fintable.io. It works by communicating with Fintable's Laravel Livewire 3 backend using your browser session. If you're the Fintable developer and would like to collaborate on an official MCP server or public API, please open an issue — we'd love to work with you! 🤝

What it does

Once installed, you can ask Claude or your favorite MCP Client things like:

• "Create these expense categories: Office Supplies, Shipping, Packaging, Equipment Rental, Software Subscriptions"
• "Create rules: 'Staples' → Office Supplies, 'UPS' → Shipping, 'USPS' → Shipping"
• "Run all rules to categorize my transactions"
• "What's my current account balance at Ally Bank?"
• "List all my categorization rules"

No more going through a 3-page wizard 20 times to set up 20 categories. Just tell Claude what you need.

Tools provided

Read Operations

Write Operations

Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• A fintable.io account with connected bank accounts
• Claude Desktop (or any MCP-compatible client — Cherry Studio, etc.)

1. Clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/jasoncbraatz/fintable-mcp.git
cd fintable-mcp

2. Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Or with uv (faster):

uv pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Authentication setup

You have two options — automatic (recommended) or manual.

Option A: Automatic cookie extraction (recommended)

Install rookiepy, which reads cookies directly from Chrome's local database using your OS credentials:

pip install rookiepy

That's it. As long as you're logged into fintable.io in Chrome, the server grabs fresh cookies on every run. No manual copying, no expiration headaches.

Option A½: Self-refreshing cookie jar (advanced)

If you want the server to maintain its own session without needing Chrome or rookiepy after the first run, add the --persist-cookies flag to your config (see step 4). This saves session cookies to ~/.fintable-mcp-cookies.json and auto-updates them from server responses — the session stays alive as long as it doesn't expire server-side between runs.

The initial seed comes from whichever auth method is available (rookiepy, env var, etc.). After that, the server is self-sufficient.

Security note: This stores session cookies on disk. The file is a dotfile in your home directory and isn't advertised anywhere, but anyone with read access to your home folder could find it. If that's a concern, stick with Option A.

Note for Python 3.13+: You may need to set PYO3_USE_ABI3_FORWARD_COMPATIBILITY=1 before installing rookiepy:

bash

Copy

PYO3_USE_ABI3_FORWARD_COMPATIBILITY=1 pip install rookiepy

Option B: Manual cookie export

If you'd rather not install rookiepy (or you're using a browser other than Chrome):

1. Open Chrome and go to fintable.io — make sure you're logged in
2. Open DevTools (F12 or Cmd+Option+I)
3. Go to the Network tab
4. Click on any request to fintable.io
5. Find the Cookie header in Request Headers
6. Copy the entire cookie string

You'll pass this as an environment variable in the next step.

4. Configure Claude Desktop

Add the following to your Claude Desktop config file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

If using rookiepy (Option A) — no env vars needed:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fintable": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/fintable-mcp/fintable_mcp.py"]
    }
  }
}

If using --persist-cookies (Option A½) — pair with rookiepy or env var for initial seed:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fintable": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/fintable-mcp/fintable_mcp.py", "--persist-cookies"]
    }
  }
}

If using manual cookies (Option B):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fintable": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/fintable-mcp/fintable_mcp.py"],
      "env": {
        "FINTABLE_COOKIES": "your_full_cookie_string_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

💡 Replace /absolute/path/to/fintable-mcp/fintable_mcp.py with the actual path where you cloned this repo.

5. Restart Claude Desktop

After saving the config, fully quit and relaunch Claude Desktop. The fintable tools will appear in Claude's tool list.

Authentication

This server authenticates using your fintable.io browser session cookies — the same cookies your browser uses when you're logged in.

Cookie resolution order:

0. Persisted cookie jar — If --persist-cookies is active and ~/.fintable-mcp-cookies.json exists with fresh cookies, use those. Self-updates from server Set-Cookie headers.
1. rookiepy — If installed, cookies are extracted fresh from Chrome's local database on every server start. Zero maintenance.
2. FINTABLE_COOKIES env var — Full cookie string from Chrome DevTools (fallback if rookiepy isn't installed).
3. FINTABLE_SESSION_COOKIE env var — Just the session cookie value (simplest manual option).

When --persist-cookies is active, whichever method provides the initial cookies will also seed the jar. On subsequent runs, the jar takes priority — and every server response refreshes it automatically.

Your credentials are never stored to disk by this server — they live only in memory while the server is running.

Session Expiration

If you're using rookiepy (recommended), session expiration is handled automatically — fresh cookies are pulled from Chrome on every server start. Just make sure you stay logged into fintable.io in Chrome.

If you're using manual cookie export, your cookies will eventually expire. When they do, the server will return an authentication error. Re-export your cookies from Chrome and update the FINTABLE_COOKIES environment variable.

How it works (for the curious / developers)

Fintable.io is a Laravel application using Livewire 3 + Alpine.js for its frontend — there's no public REST API. This MCP server:

1. Authenticates using your browser session cookies (CSRF token + session cookie)
2. Fetches pages to extract Livewire component snapshots from wire:snapshot HTML attributes
3. Makes Livewire protocol calls — POST requests to the /livewire-{hash}/update endpoint with component snapshots, method calls, and property updates
4. Parses HTML responses to extract structured data (accounts, categories, rules, transactions)

The Livewire update path includes a hash (e.g., /livewire-5c7ce5a8/update) that can change when the app is redeployed. The server auto-discovers this path from the data-update-uri HTML attribute on each page load, so it stays resilient across deployments.

Known Issues & Limitations

Livewire Hash Changes

The Livewire update endpoint includes a build hash (e.g., /livewire-5c7ce5a8/update) that changes on each deployment. The server auto-discovers this on every page fetch, but if Fintable significantly restructures their Livewire components or changes component names, things may break. This is inherent to working without an official API.

HTML Parsing Fragility

Since there's no JSON API, read operations depend on parsing HTML structure. If Fintable redesigns their UI layout, the parsing logic may need updating. This is the biggest maintenance burden of the current approach.

The Path Forward: JSON Endpoints

The ideal solution is for Fintable to expose lightweight JSON API endpoints. This would:

• Eliminate the fragile HTML parsing
• Remove the Livewire hash dependency
• Enable more reliable integrations
• Open the door for other community tools and integrations
• Be a great selling point for the product (MCP-ready financial tools are a differentiator!)

If you're the Fintable developer reading this — even a handful of authenticated JSON endpoints for categories, rules, and transactions would make this server rock-solid and dramatically easier to maintain. Happy to collaborate on the design. 🚀

Security Model

This server runs locally on your machine as a stdio subprocess of your MCP client. It:

• Never exposes a network port
• Never stores credentials to disk
• Only communicates with fintable.io using your existing browser session
• Runs as a single-user, single-client process

By default, session cookies are kept in memory only while the server is running. With rookiepy, they're extracted fresh from Chrome on each launch — no environment variables or config files needed.

If --persist-cookies is enabled, cookies are saved to ~/.fintable-mcp-cookies.json (a dotfile in your home directory). This is an opt-in tradeoff: convenience of a self-refreshing session in exchange for cookies existing on disk. Delete the file at any time to revoke the session.

Contributing

PRs welcome! Some ideas for future improvements:

• Support for transaction date range filtering
• Category group management (create/rename groups)
• Rule priority reordering
• Export categories/rules as JSON for backup
• Support for multiple Fintable accounts

Note on deletions: Category deletion is intentionally not supported — that's a destructive action best done through the Fintable web UI where you can see the full impact. A little friction before deleting things is a feature, not a bug.

Disclaimer

This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially supported by fintable.io. It was built by reverse-engineering the Livewire 3 frontend protocol. Use at your own risk — the underlying Livewire protocol may change without notice.

License

MIT - Jason C Braatz