Changelog

Updates to the guides, newest first. The AI assistant connection (MCP) is the first guide on this site, so the early entries all trace that guide.

September 16, 2026

Your assistant can now add transactions to YNAB, and tidying up is its own permission.
Until now, the assistant could only work on transactions your bank had already brought into YNAB, like splitting a grocery receipt across categories. It could never add anything new. Now it can. If you pay cash at the fruit store, mail a check to the yeshiva, or buy something the bank will never import, ask your assistant to record it. It confirms the account, date, and amount with you first, and it can create the split in the same step.

We also split the old YNAB writing permission in two, so you choose how far your assistant can go. One covers tidying up transactions your bank already imported, like splitting a receipt or fixing a category. The other covers adding new transactions. Approving one never grants the other, and ynab:read stays read-only. If you only want receipt matching, approve just the editing permission. Apps approved before today must reconnect to get the new choices, and old approvals never gain creation access. If an approval screen was already open, start it again. Read-only connections are unaffected. See the MCP guide.

Profile includes YNAB refresh status. Assistants that read your profile now see the same YNAB refresh fields the app uses after you request a refresh (status and last successful sync time). See the MCP guide.
Edit YNAB transactions from your assistant. Snap a photo of a receipt, drop it into your chat, and your assistant can match it to the transaction your bank imported — then split it across categories or fix the category, without you touching YNAB. Drop in a bank statement and it can reconcile a whole month the same way. Assistants update existing YNAB transactions after you approve ynab:transactions:write: recategorize a row or split a multi-category purchase across categories. It only touches transactions your bank already imported — the server cannot create YNAB transactions, change an amount, or rewrite transfers and rows that are already split, and every change is logged. Updated September 16, 2026: see the September 16 entry above for how YNAB permissions work today. See the MCP guide.

Kesef Compass category grouping. Assistants can now list Compass categories and, with your approval, group your spending labels into those buckets. Listing the Compass category list needs only profile:read (it is not a YNAB permission). Grouping labels is category-map:write and does not change anything in YNAB. Compass budget and insights permissions are unprefixed (budgets:read, budgets:write, insights:read). See the MCP guide.
MCP guide simplified. We tightened the setup guide: one combined intro, shorter connection steps for Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor, and leaner permission and safety sections. Every fact you need is still there, just with less to read. See the MCP guide.
Changelog added. This page now tracks changes to the guides, backfilled to the first MCP entry below.

Guides site launched. Frum Finance published a customer guides site with the first guide: how to connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor to your own budget data with the member MCP server. Read the guide.
Read live budgets, insights, and YNAB. That first guide already listed what the assistant can fetch after you approve: monthly and annual budgets, up to 12 months of history, community insights, and (if YNAB is linked) categories, plan months, account balances, and a month of transactions. Transaction amounts use YNAB milliunits: 1000 means $1.00. See the MCP guide.
Save budgets from the assistant. With budgets:write, the assistant can save monthly rows using the same confirmation step as the app, and annual rows. Every save is logged with which app made the change. See the MCP guide.
Rebrand to Frum Finance. The guides site header and favicon were updated to the Frum Finance brand.

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