quicken-mac-mcp

A Claude Skill + MCP server that gives Claude read-only access to your Quicken For Mac financial data. Ask Claude about your accounts, transactions, spending by category, monthly trends, investment holdings, and more.

The database is always opened read-only — your Quicken data is never modified.

Skill or MCP — which do I want?

This repo ships two artifacts that share the same schema knowledge (docs/schema.md):

• Skill (plugin/skills/quicken/SKILL.md) — teaches Claude to probe and read the Quicken SQLite database directly with Python 3's standard-library SQLite support. Its focused references/ cover balances, cash flow, investments, budgets, tags, and QuickFill rules. Works in Claude Code and any other Claude surface that loads skills. No native module install or MCP server process. This is the recommended path.
• MCP server — wraps the same SQL recipes as eight prepackaged tools (list_accounts, query_transactions, spending_by_category, …). Use it when you're working in a non-Claude MCP client (Cursor, Cline, mcp-remote bridges) that can't load skills, or when you'd rather call typed tools than have Claude write SQL.

The Claude Code plugin install (claude plugin install quicken-mac-mcp) bundles both, with the skill leading and the MCP tools available as shortcuts.

Requirements

Quicken For Mac must be open while using either the skill or the MCP. Quicken encrypts its database file when the app is closed — the data is only readable while Quicken is running.

How it works

Quicken For Mac stores data in a Core Data SQLite database inside a .quicken bundle in your Documents folder (e.g., ~/Documents/MyFinances.quicken/data). The skill teaches Claude how to query that database directly; the MCP server is a thin wrapper that exposes eight prepackaged queries as tools.

Install — recommended (Claude Code, plugin)

claude plugin install quicken-mac-mcp

This installs both the /quicken skill (recommended path) and the MCP server. Claude will lead with the skill and fall back to the MCP tools when convenient.

Install — MCP-only paths

Use these if you're in a non-Claude-Code client that can't load skills, or you only want the typed-tool wrapper.

Claude Code (MCP only)

claude mcp add quicken -- npx -y quicken-mac-mcp

Claude Desktop (MCPB drag-and-drop)

Download the bundle for your Mac from the latest GitHub release and drag it into Claude Desktop:

• Apple Silicon: quicken-mac-mcp-arm64.mcpb
• Intel: quicken-mac-mcp-x64.mcpb

It will prompt you for your database path (or auto-detect it).

Claude Desktop (manual JSON)

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "quicken": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "quicken-mac-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop and you'll see a hammer icon with 8 tools available.

Custom database path

If you have multiple Quicken files, or your .quicken bundle isn't in ~/Documents, set the QUICKEN_DB_PATH environment variable:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "quicken": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "quicken-mac-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "QUICKEN_DB_PATH": "/path/to/YourFile.quicken/data"
      }
    }
  }
}

By default, the server auto-detects your Quicken database only when exactly one .quicken bundle exists in ~/Documents. If multiple bundles exist, it refuses to guess; set QUICKEN_DB_PATH explicitly.

MCP tools

These are the eight prepackaged tools the MCP server exposes. The skill covers the same ground (and more) by writing SQL directly against the database — see plugin/skills/quicken/SKILL.md.

Self-Documenting Command-Line Interface (qmac)

This project includes a fully featured, self-documenting command-line interface qmac that allows you to query your Quicken SQLite database directly from the terminal without going through an MCP client.

Features:

• Centralized Schema Validation: Arguments are dynamically coerced to correct types (numbers, booleans, arrays) and validated.
• Subcommand Help (--help / -h): Easily inspect parameter descriptions and types for any subcommand (e.g. qmac spending-by-category --help).
• Syntax Error Auto-Help: Providing incorrect syntax or missing required fields outputs a precise error message along with the subcommand's help page.
• Integrated Manual (qmac man): Renders the complete, stylized UNIX man page guide right in your shell.
• Premium ASCII Table Layout: Columns are dynamically auto-sized, numbers are right-aligned, and headers are formatted for supreme clarity. Use --json to get raw data for scripting.

Example Commands:

# General help
qmac --help

# Render stylized manual page
qmac man

# List checking accounts
qmac list-accounts --account-type checking

# Find Costco transactions over $100 in 2024
qmac query-transactions --start-date 2024-01-01 --end-date 2024-12-31 --payee-search costco --max-amount -100

# Get subcategory spending breakdown for Q1 2025
qmac spending-by-category --start-date 2025-01-01 --end-date 2025-03-31 --group-by category

# Display investment portfolio holding valuations
qmac list-portfolio

Example prompts

• "List my accounts"
• "What did I spend on groceries last month?"
• "Show my spending by category for 2024"
• "How has my monthly spending changed over the past year?"
• "Find all transactions from Costco over $100"
• "What are my top 10 payees by transaction count?"
• "Compare my food spending in 2024 vs 2025"

Sovereign Financial Exporter (CSV & relational schema.json)

Want to move your complete personal financial history out of Quicken to your own sovereign, self-hosted, or custom agentic analysis platform?

This project includes a high-speed, zero-dependency, pure Python utility scripts/export_sovereign_csv.py that connects to your unlocked Quicken database and extracts it into a cleanly normalized, portable package.

How to use the exporter:

1. Open your Quicken For Mac application and log in so that the database is decrypted.
2. In your terminal, execute the export script:
   bash

   Copy

   python3 scripts/export_sovereign_csv.py
   

3. A new directory quicken_sovereign_export/ will be generated, containing:
   • accounts.csv: Beautifully normalized accounts list (checking, credit, brokerage, retirement, etc.).
   • categories.csv: Income & expense category path structure.
   • payees.csv: Registered merchant names list.
   • transactions.csv: Top-level ledger with post-date, notes, and transaction-level details.
   • transaction_splits.csv: Line-item splits showing amounts and category IDs.
   • holdings.csv: Active investment holdings reconstructed from your individual tax lots with cost basis and unrealized returns.
   • tags.csv: Custom user tags mapped directly to splits.
   • schema.json: Complete relational column and foreign key reference dictionary.
   • README.md: A detailed migration guide demonstrating how to load and query your financial history instantly in DuckDB, Pandas, PostgreSQL, or other databases.

This allows other agentic platforms (like custom GPTs, self-hosted LLMs, or sovereign database agents) to immediately parse, ingest, and analyze your entire financial history.

Database schema

Quicken For Mac uses Core Data with these key tables:

Dates use Core Data epoch (seconds since 2001-01-01). The MCP server handles all date conversion automatically — you pass ISO 8601 dates, it returns ISO 8601 dates. The skill recipes show the conversion (+ 978307200) inline so Claude can write SQL directly.