Local First personal finance MCP README
The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Local First personal finance MCP listing page.
finance-mcp
Local-first personal finance MCP. Aggregates bank, brokerage, credit, and loan accounts via Plaid. Writes balances, holdings, and transactions to your local Obsidian-style markdown vault. Access tokens stay in macOS Keychain. Never sends data anywhere except plaid.com.
What it does
- Link any US bank or brokerage via Plaid (Chase, Citi, Schwab, Discover, Fidelity, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Capital One, Vanguard, Robinhood, Coinbase, student-loan servicers, 12,000+ institutions total).
- Pull live balances for every account → writes the auto-sync block in your vault's
Accounts.md. - Pull investment holdings with shares, cost basis, current value → writes
Investments.md. - Pull transactions cursor-style (delta only after first sync) → stores in local SQLite.
- Roll up monthly cash flow by category → writes
Cash Flow.md. - Pull liabilities (credit-card APRs, statement balances, student-loan payoff info).
- Audit log every Plaid call and every keychain access.
Why local-first matters
Most personal-finance SaaS (Mint, Copilot, YNAB, Monarch) puts your bank data on their servers and charges you for the privilege. This MCP:
- Runs on your laptop, talks directly to Plaid, writes to your local vault.
- Stores access tokens in macOS Keychain, not env files or any database.
- Never returns access tokens in tool responses — items are referenced by alias (
chase,citi, etc.). - Vault data is plain markdown with inline Dataview fields — your data, your format, queryable forever.
Install
Open Claude Code, paste:
Requires macOS (for Keychain) and Python 3.11+. After install, set your Plaid credentials in .env at the plugin root (see SETUP.md for the Plaid signup walkthrough).
First-time use
If it shows blockers, follow them. Once green:
Open the returned link_token in Plaid's Link demo page (paste the token in the field labeled "Link Token", then click "Open Plaid Link"). Complete bank auth in the browser. Copy the public_token from the success page.
Repeat for each bank.
Your vault's Accounts.md, Investments.md, and Cash Flow.md now have auto-sync blocks with current data. Re-run any time.
Tool surface
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
healthcheck | Verify Plaid creds, vault path, keychain access. |
link_start(alias) | Start linking a new bank. Returns link_token. |
link_complete(alias, public_token) | Exchange public_token, store in Keychain. |
list_linked | List linked institutions + last-sync timestamps. |
unlink(alias) | Remove an institution. Revokes Plaid item + deletes Keychain entry. |
sync_balances([alias]) | Pull current balances → Accounts.md. |
sync_holdings([alias]) | Pull investment positions → Investments.md. |
sync_transactions([alias]) | Cursor-based transaction sync → SQLite. |
sync_liabilities([alias]) | Pull credit + loan details. |
sync_all([alias]) | All of the above in sequence. |
rollup_month(month) | Compute monthly income/expense rollup → Cash Flow.md. |
audit_tail(n) | Last N audit-log entries. |
Security model
- Plaid
access_tokenlives in macOS Keychain (securityCLI), service namefinance-mcp, account name = your institution alias. - Plaid
client_id+secretlive in.env(chmod 600). Never committed (in.gitignore). - Transaction history lives in SQLite at
~/.claude/finance-mcp/data.db(not in your vault). - Vault writes only happen inside the configured
FINANCE_MCP_FINANCE_FOLDER. Set to empty string to disable vault writes entirely. - Audit log records every Plaid call and every keychain operation.
- Tool responses never include raw access tokens.
Plaid environments
- sandbox (default): fake banks, fake credentials (
user_good/pass_good). Free forever. Use this first. - development: real banks, free up to 100 items per Plaid account. Use this for personal accounts.
- production: real banks at scale. Requires a Plaid application + paid plan.
Set via PLAID_ENV in .env. Switch by re-linking all institutions (tokens are environment-bound).
Companion MCPs
jkoelker/schwab-mcp— Direct Charles Schwab Trader API for options, trade placement, and deep position data beyond what Plaid exposes.tomasgesino/schwab-mcp— Schwab wheel-strategy management with dry-run-default trading.
finance-mcp covers Schwab basic balances and holdings via Plaid; the above are the route for Schwab power-user features.
Related MCPs in this family
- apollo-mcp — Apollo.io CRM + outbound sequences.
- slack-mcp — Multi-workspace Slack with draft+confirm safety.
- imessage-mcp — Local iMessage with Whisper voice transcription.
- whatsapp-mcp — WhatsApp via local bridge.
- substack-mcp — Publish posts + Notes, pull analytics.
- parse-mcp — Multi-backend document parsing router.
- graph-query-mcp — Personal knowledge graph queries.
Telemetry
This plugin sends a single anonymous install signal to myceliumai.co the first time it loads in a Claude Code session on a given machine.
What is sent:
- Plugin name (e.g.
slack-mcp) - Plugin version (e.g.
0.1.0)
What is NOT sent:
- No user identifiers, names, emails, tokens, or API keys
- No file paths, message content, or anything from your work
- No IP address is stored after dedup processing
Why: Helps the maintainer know which plugins people actually install, so attention goes to the ones that get used.
Opt out: Set the environment variable MYCELIUM_NO_PING=1 before launching Claude Code. The hook will skip the network call entirely. Already-pinged installs leave a sentinel at ~/.mycelium/onboarded-<plugin> — delete it if you want to reset state.
License
MIT. See LICENSE.
Legacy install (manual)
For users who can't use the plugin marketplace yet, the manual flow:
Then register with Claude Code by adding to your vault's .mcp.json (project scope) or ~/.claude.json (user scope, via claude mcp add):
Restart Claude Code. Tools appear under mcp__finance__*.
Built by Adelaida Diaz-Roa. Full install or team version at diazroa.com.