Pp Simplefin

SimpleFIN — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the simplefin-pp-cli binary. You must verify the CLI is installed before invoking any command from this skill. If it is missing, install it first:

1. Install via the Printing Press installer. It defaults binaries to $HOME/.local/bin on macOS/Linux and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin on Windows:

   npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install simplefin --cli-only
   

2. Verify: simplefin-pp-cli --version
3. Ensure the reported install directory is on $PATH for the agent/runtime that will invoke this skill.

If the npx install fails (no Node, offline, etc.), fall back to a direct Go install (requires Go 1.26.6 or newer). This installs into $GOPATH/bin (default $HOME/go/bin), so add that directory to $PATH instead:

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/payments/simplefin/cmd/simplefin-pp-cli@latest

If --version reports "command not found" after install, the runtime cannot see the binary directory on $PATH. Do not proceed with skill commands until verification succeeds.

Every existing SimpleFIN tool is an importer into someone else's app. This is a CLI and a local database you own: sync once (rate-limit aware), then run cross-institution analytics offline. networth tracks your trajectory over time, recurring surfaces hidden subscriptions, portfolio computes holdings gain/loss the ecosystem ignores, and export bridges into Beancount/Ledger.

When to Use This CLI

Use this CLI when you want programmatic, offline, cross-institution access to your own financial data: balances, transactions, holdings, net worth, cash flow, and subscription detection. It is ideal for cron jobs, agent workflows, and plaintextaccounting pipelines where you want a local SQLite database you control rather than a hosted budgeting app.

Anti-triggers

Do not use this CLI for:

• Do not use this CLI to move money, pay bills, or transfer funds — SimpleFIN is strictly read-only.
• Do not use it to connect a bank for the first time in a browser — that is the SimpleFIN Bridge's /create web flow; this CLI consumes the resulting token.
• Do not use it as a budgeting app UI — for full budgeting use Actual Budget or Lunch Money, which can consume SimpleFIN too.

Unique Capabilities

These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.

Local state that compounds

• networth — Total net worth across every institution, with a balance trajectory over time no bank app can show.

  Reach for this when an agent needs a single cross-institution net-worth number or its trend; no single /accounts call gives history.

  simplefin-pp-cli networth --trend --agent
  

• cashflow — Income vs outflow by month and top-spend merchants across all accounts.

  Use for spending/income rollups; the API returns raw transactions, not aggregates.

  simplefin-pp-cli cashflow --month --agent --select month,income,outflow,net
  

• recurring — Surfaces subscriptions and regular obligations by detecting repeated payees with regular cadence.

  Use to find recurring charges hiding across multiple accounts before they surprise the user.

  simplefin-pp-cli recurring --min-occurrences 3 --agent
  

• reconcile — Finds and merges duplicate transactions created by SimpleFIN's unstable, mirrored IDs using content hashing.

  Run after sync to detect duplicate charges that ID-based dedup misses.

  simplefin-pp-cli reconcile --agent
  

• since — What's new across all accounts since a date or your last sync — new transactions and balance changes, neutrally framed.

  Use for a quick 'what happened lately' digest across accounts without scanning every transaction.

  simplefin-pp-cli since 7d --agent
  

Differentiators nobody else has

• portfolio — Investment positions with market value vs cost basis and total gain/loss across brokerages.

  Use for portfolio gain/loss; the ecosystem-wide gap means this data is otherwise invisible.

  simplefin-pp-cli portfolio --gain --agent
  

• categorize — Assigns categories to transactions with deterministic keyword/regex rules (the protocol has none).

  Run before cashflow to get category breakdowns; deterministic and offline.

  simplefin-pp-cli categorize --apply --agent
  

• export — Exports the local ledger to ledger, beancount, csv, or qif for plaintextaccounting tools.

  Use to bridge into Beancount/Ledger/GnuCash workflows.

  simplefin-pp-cli export --format beancount --since 90d
  

Command Reference

accounts — Fetch accounts, balances, transactions, and holdings live from the SimpleFIN server

• simplefin-pp-cli accounts — Live fetch the full Account Set (all institutions) from the SimpleFIN server

info — SimpleFIN server metadata

• simplefin-pp-cli info — Report which SimpleFIN protocol versions the server supports

Finding the right command

When you know what you want to do but not which command does it, ask the CLI directly:

simplefin-pp-cli which "<capability in your own words>"

which resolves a natural-language capability query to the best matching command from this CLI's curated feature index. Exit code 0 means at least one match; exit code 2 means no confident match — fall back to --help or use a narrower query.

Recipes

First connect and net worth

simplefin-pp-cli auth claim <setup-token> && simplefin-pp-cli sync --since 90d && simplefin-pp-cli networth

Claim once, pull 90 days into the store, then see cross-institution net worth.

Agent-friendly cash flow

simplefin-pp-cli cashflow --month --agent --select month,income,outflow,net

Narrow the nested response to just the fields an agent needs.

Find subscriptions

simplefin-pp-cli recurring --min-occurrences 3 --json

List recurring charges seen 3+ times across all accounts.

Portfolio gain/loss

simplefin-pp-cli portfolio --gain --agent

Holdings market value vs cost basis across every brokerage.

Export to Beancount

simplefin-pp-cli export --format beancount --since 90d

Bridge the local ledger into a plaintextaccounting workflow.

Auth Setup

SimpleFIN has no API key. You claim a base64 Setup Token to receive an Access URL (https://user:pass@host/simplefin) that bakes in HTTP Basic credentials and the server host. Run 'simplefin-pp-cli auth claim ' once (or set SIMPLEFIN_ACCESS_URL); the access URL is stored chmod 600 and never logged. A reusable public demo token is available at beta-bridge.simplefin.org/info/developers for testing.

Run simplefin-pp-cli doctor to verify setup.

Agent Mode

Add --agent to any command. Expands to: --json --compact --no-input --no-color --yes.

• Pipeable — JSON on stdout, errors on stderr

• Filterable — --select keeps a subset of fields. Dotted paths descend into nested structures; arrays traverse element-wise. Critical for keeping context small on verbose APIs:

  simplefin-pp-cli accounts --agent --select id,name,status
  

• Previewable — --dry-run shows the request without sending

• Offline-friendly — sync/search commands can use the local SQLite store when available

• Non-interactive — never prompts, every input is a flag

• Read-only — do not use this CLI for create, update, delete, publish, comment, upvote, invite, order, send, or other mutating requests

Response envelope

Commands that read from the local store or the API wrap output in a provenance envelope:

{
  "meta": {"source": "live" | "local", "synced_at": "...", "reason": "..."},
  "results": <data>
}

Parse .results for data and .meta.source to know whether it's live or local. A human-readable N results (live) summary is printed to stderr only when stdout is a terminal AND no machine-format flag (--json, --csv, --compact, --quiet, --plain, --select) is set — piped/agent consumers and explicit-format runs get pure JSON on stdout.

Paths and state

Agents should treat the CLI's path resolver as part of the runtime contract:

• Use --home <dir> for one invocation, or set SIMPLEFIN_HOME=<dir> to relocate all four path kinds under one root.

• Use per-kind env vars only when a specific kind must diverge: SIMPLEFIN_CONFIG_DIR, SIMPLEFIN_DATA_DIR, SIMPLEFIN_STATE_DIR, SIMPLEFIN_CACHE_DIR.

• Resolution order is per-kind env var, --home, SIMPLEFIN_HOME, XDG (XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_STATE_HOME, XDG_CACHE_HOME), then platform defaults.

• config contains settings like config.toml and profiles. data contains credentials.toml, data.db, cookies, and auth sidecars. state contains persisted queries, jobs, and teach.log. cache contains regenerable HTTP/cache files.

• Stored secrets live in credentials.toml under the data dir. Existing legacy config.toml secrets are read for compatibility and leave config.toml on the first auth write.

• Run simplefin-pp-cli doctor --fail-on warn to surface path and credential-location warnings. agent-context exposes a schema v4 paths block for agents that need the resolved dirs.

• For MCP, pass relocation through the MCP host config. The MCP binary does not inherit CLI flags:

  {
    "mcpServers": {
      "simplefin": {
        "command": "simplefin-pp-mcp",
        "env": {
          "SIMPLEFIN_HOME": "/srv/simplefin"
        }
      }
    }
  }
  

Fleet precedence: an inherited per-kind env var overrides an explicit --home for that kind. Use SIMPLEFIN_HOME or per-kind vars as durable fleet levers, and use --home only for a single invocation. Relocation is not reversible by unsetting env vars; move files manually before clearing SIMPLEFIN_HOME, or doctor will not find credentials left under the former root.

Agent Feedback

When you (or the agent) notice something off about this CLI, record it:

simplefin-pp-cli feedback "the --since flag is inclusive but docs say exclusive"
simplefin-pp-cli feedback --stdin < notes.txt
simplefin-pp-cli feedback list --json --limit 10

Entries are stored locally as feedback.jsonl under the resolved data dir. They are never POSTed unless SIMPLEFIN_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or SIMPLEFIN_FEEDBACK_AUTO_SEND=true. Default behavior is local-only.

Write what surprised you, not a bug report. Short, specific, one line: that is the part that compounds.

Output Delivery

Every command accepts --deliver <sink>. The output goes to the named sink in addition to (or instead of) stdout, so agents can route command results without hand-piping. Three sinks are supported:

Unknown schemes are refused with a structured error naming the supported set. Webhook failures return non-zero and log the URL + HTTP status on stderr.

Named Profiles

A profile is a saved set of flag values, reused across invocations. Use it when a scheduled agent calls the same command every run with the same configuration - HeyGen's "Beacon" pattern.

simplefin-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
simplefin-pp-cli --profile briefing accounts
simplefin-pp-cli profile list --json
simplefin-pp-cli profile show briefing
simplefin-pp-cli profile delete briefing --yes

Explicit flags always win over profile values; profile values win over defaults. agent-context lists all available profiles under available_profiles so introspecting agents discover them at runtime.

Exit Codes

Argument Parsing

Parse $ARGUMENTS:

1. Empty, help, or --help → show simplefin-pp-cli --help output
2. Starts with install → ends with mcp → MCP installation; otherwise → see Prerequisites above
3. Anything else → Direct Use (execute as CLI command with --agent)

MCP Server Installation

1. Install the MCP server:

   go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/payments/simplefin/cmd/simplefin-pp-mcp@latest
   

2. Register with Claude Code:

   claude mcp add simplefin-pp-mcp -- simplefin-pp-mcp
   

3. Verify: claude mcp list

Direct Use

1. Check if installed: which simplefin-pp-cli If not found, offer to install (see Prerequisites at the top of this skill).
2. Match the user query to the best command from the Unique Capabilities and Command Reference above.
3. Execute with the --agent flag:

   simplefin-pp-cli <command> [subcommand] [args] --agent
   

4. If ambiguous, drill into subcommand help: simplefin-pp-cli <command> --help.