What is Mcp Ynab

mcp-ynab is a custom MCP server implemented in TypeScript that serves as a bridge to the official YNAB API, enabling users to interact with their financial data through MCP-compatible environments.

Use cases

Use cases include tracking expenses, managing budgets, generating financial reports, and automating transaction entries, making financial management more efficient.

How to use

To use mcp-ynab, clone the repository, install the necessary dependencies using npm, and configure your YNAB API token in the Cursor configuration file. After setup, you can utilize various MCP commands to manage your YNAB data.

Key features

Key features include listing budgets, accounts, and transactions, retrieving account balances, getting budget summaries, and creating new transactions, all through standardized MCP commands.

Where to use

mcp-ynab can be used in personal finance management, budgeting applications, and any environment that supports MCP, allowing for seamless integration with YNAB.

MCP YNAB Server 💰

Welcome to the MCP server for YNAB (TypeScript version)! 🎉 This project allows you to connect Cursor (or another MCP client) to your You Need A Budget (YNAB) account to interact with your financial data directly from your editor.

1. What is this? 🤔 (Purpose)

This is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) in TypeScript that acts as a bridge to the official YNAB API. The goal is to provide standardized tools for reading and writing YNAB data from MCP-compatible environments, allowing AI assistants like Cursor’s to help you with your finances.

2. Available Tools 🛠️

This server provides the following tools, each with its own detailed documentation:

• listBudgets: Lists your available budgets.
• listAccounts: Lists accounts within a specified budget.
• getAccountBalance: Fetches the current balance for a specific account.
• listCategories: Lists categories within a specified budget.
• getCategoryInfo: Gets detailed information about a specific category for a given month.
• getBudgetSummary: Provides a budget summary (income, budgeted, activity) for a specific month.
• listTransactions: Lists transactions for a budget, with filtering options (by account, category, date, etc.).
• createTransaction: Creates a new transaction or split transaction within a budget.

See each tool’s README.md for detailed information on arguments, output, and usage context.

3. Setup 🚀

1. Clone the Repository:

   # git clone https://github.com/Bulletninja/mcp-ynab # If you haven't already
   cd mcp-ynab 
   

2. Install Dependencies:

   npm install
   

3. Configure Your YNAB API Token: You need a Personal Access Token from YNAB. The recommended and tested way for Cursor integration is:

   • Edit your global Cursor configuration file ~/.cursor/mcp.json.
   • Add or modify the entry for mcp-ynab, ensuring the command, args, cwd, and env are correct:

   • Alternative (requires code modification): You could use a .env file in the project root, but you would need to uncomment the dotenv logic in src/server.ts and ensure it doesn’t interfere with server mode.

4. Compile the Code:

   npm run build
   

4. Usage with Cursor 💡

1. Ensure the configuration in ~/.cursor/mcp.json is correct and "enabled": true.
2. Restart Cursor to load the updated configuration and launch the server.
3. Done! In Cursor’s MCP settings, you should see mcp-ynab with a green dot and the list of available tools.
4. You can now ask the AI assistant to use the tools:
   • “List my YNAB budgets”
   • “Use mcp_ynab_list_accounts with budget_id ‘last-used’”
   • “What’s the balance of my account X (ID: YYY) in budget Z?” (Might use mcp_ynab_get_account_balance)

5. Development 🧑‍💻

• Run server in development mode (with hot-reload): npm run dev
• Run tests: npm test
• Compile for production/MCP: npm run build
• CLI Mode (Commented Out): The logic to run commands like node dist/server.js list-budgets is commented out in src/server.ts because it interfered with Cursor’s MCP server mode. You can uncomment it for local testing if needed, but remember to comment it back out and recompile for Cursor integration.