tuskledger-mcp

Model Context Protocol server for Tusk Ledger. Gives your AI assistant typed access to your local personal finance data — without sending anything outside your machine.

🌐 Project site: www.tuskledger.com — what the parent app does, feature tour, public demo, and architecture. This package is the MCP bridge.

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Quick context

Tusk Ledger is a self-hosted, Mint-style personal finance app that pulls your accounts via Plaid and runs entirely on your laptop. This package (tuskledger-mcp) is the bridge that lets an AI assistant — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cowork, Claude Code, anything that speaks MCP — read that data and answer questions about your finances using typed tool calls instead of scraping the React UI.

What you can ask your assistant

Once the server is wired up, these all work in plain English:

• "Categorize the last 6 months of transactions from Whole Foods as Groceries instead of Shopping." → Assistant queries them, you confirm, then makes a rule.
• "What did I spend on coffee last quarter?" → 3 seconds, no UI clicks.
• "My net worth dropped this morning — what's causing it?" → Assistant pulls accounts, balances, and recent transactions and diagnoses.
• "Am I on track to max out my HSA this year?" → Reads HSA bucket + YTD contributions + IRS limit, returns the gap.
• "What subscriptions am I paying for that I haven't used recently?" → Lists recurring charges with cadence and last-paid date.
• "Will my checking dip below $1k before payday?" → Pulls upcoming bills + paychecks and projects a running balance.

Local-first, no exceptions. The server talks only to your Tusk Ledger backend on http://127.0.0.1:8000. There is no "MCP cloud" — this is one Python process on your machine, talking to another Python process on the same machine. Your transactions never leave the laptop.

What tools are available

17 read-mostly tools. Group at a glance:

Group	Tools
Accounts	list_accounts, list_stale_accounts
Transactions	query_transactions, search_transactions
Spending insight	get_spending_summary, get_top_merchants, get_recurring_subscriptions, get_merchant_details
Cash flow	get_upcoming_bills, get_cash_flow_forecast
Budgets	get_budget (limits; pair with get_spending_summary for over/under)
Net worth & investments	get_net_worth, get_holdings, get_investments_summary
Taxes & planning	get_trading_tax_summary (FIFO + wash sales), get_retirement_projection (Monte Carlo)
Ops	run_sync (trigger a Plaid pull)

Full schemas (parameters, defaults, examples) are reported by the server itself — your MCP client renders them, and they're also visible in tuskledger_mcp/server.py.

Prerequisites

• A running Tusk Ledger install (the main app), reachable on http://127.0.0.1:8000
• The backend started with DEV_BYPASS_AUTH=true — v0 of the MCP server is auth-bypass-only. If you leave auth on you'll get 401 on every tool call. See Auth below for the rationale and the auth-aware roadmap.
• Python 3.10+
• An MCP-aware client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cowork, Claude Code, …)

Install

A note for users coming from MCP marketplace listings (LobeHub, Glama, mcp.so, etc.): these directories try to auto-install MCP servers in a sandbox to verify they boot. This server intentionally won't pass that check, because it requires the main Tusk Ledger app already running on your machine. The "cannot be installed" / red badges on those listings are about the auto-installer, not about this package. Use one of the manual config snippets below.

Option A — uvx (recommended; no permanent install)

If you have uv (pip install uv):

// In your MCP client's config
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tuskledger": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/BradMorphsters/tuskledger-mcp", "tuskledger-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

uvx handles the isolated Python env; nothing pollutes your global Python. The server is fetched and cached on first invocation.

Option B — pip install from GitHub

pip install git+https://github.com/BradMorphsters/tuskledger-mcp

Then point your MCP client at the installed tuskledger-mcp binary:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tuskledger": {
      "command": "tuskledger-mcp"
    }
  }
}

(Use the full path from which tuskledger-mcp if you're using a venv.)

Option C — clone for development

git clone https://github.com/BradMorphsters/tuskledger-mcp
cd tuskledger-mcp
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Where MCP client configs live

Client	Config path
Claude Desktop (macOS)	~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Claude Desktop (Windows)	%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Cursor	Settings → Features → Model Context Protocol → paste the same mcpServers JSON shown above
Cowork	Same mcpServers JSON as Claude Desktop. Add it via Cowork's MCP server settings (or, if you're managing it as a plugin, ship the snippet inside the plugin's .mcp.json). Anthropic MCP docs
Claude Code	Project-level .claude/mcp.json, or user-level via claude mcp add tuskledger uvx --from git+https://github.com/BradMorphsters/tuskledger-mcp tuskledger-mcp

After editing the config, restart the client. The server boots when the client starts and shuts down when it closes.

Configuration

Two environment variables, both optional:

Var	Default	Notes
TUSKLEDGER_BASE_URL	http://127.0.0.1:8000	Where your Tusk Ledger backend listens. Override if you've moved the port.
TUSKLEDGER_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	10	Per-request timeout. Bump if your DB is huge and a query takes a while.

Example:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tuskledger": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/BradMorphsters/tuskledger-mcp", "tuskledger-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "TUSKLEDGER_BASE_URL": "http://127.0.0.1:8000",
        "TUSKLEDGER_TIMEOUT_SECONDS": "30"
      }
    }
  }
}

Auth

This v0 assumes your Tusk Ledger backend is running with DEV_BYPASS_AUTH=true (the common single-machine pattern documented in the main repo's README). If you've kept auth enabled, the MCP server's calls will fail with 401s and you'll see the error in your assistant's response.

Auth-aware support is on the roadmap. Until then, if you want both auth and MCP, run the backend with DEV_BYPASS_AUTH=true only when you're using the assistant, and flip it back when you're done.

What this server intentionally does NOT do

By design, v0 is read-mostly. The server doesn't expose:

• Deleting accounts, transactions, rules, or goals
• Modifying the database schema or running migrations
• Disabling auth or rotating the encryption key
• Touching Plaid access tokens
• Sending data anywhere outside 127.0.0.1

The reasoning: an AI assistant should be able to help you understand your data and run safe operations (sync, queries), but irreversible changes belong in the web UI where you can see what's about to happen. We may add structured write tools (e.g. "create a rule") in later versions with explicit confirmation flows, but the bar will stay high.

Troubleshooting

Could not reach Tusk Ledger backend at http://127.0.0.1:8000 — Your Tusk Ledger app isn't running. From the main repo: ./start.sh.

401 Unauthorized from any tool — Auth is on. See the Auth section above. Run with DEV_BYPASS_AUTH=true for now.

404 Not Found — The backend doesn't have the endpoint we're trying to hit. Probably means you're on an older version of Tusk Ledger. Update the main app, restart your MCP client.

Tools don't appear in your assistant — The MCP server failed to boot. Check your client's MCP server logs (Claude Desktop has a "View MCP server logs" menu item). Common causes: bad path in the config, Python not on PATH, uvx not installed.

General health check — From the main Tusk Ledger repo: ./tuskledger doctor. This is the canonical diagnostic for the whole install.

Development

git clone https://github.com/BradMorphsters/tuskledger-mcp
cd tuskledger-mcp
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .
pip install pytest pytest-asyncio
pytest tests/ -v

The tests don't bring up an MCP transport — they exercise the dispatch layer directly with a mock client. The MCP protocol itself is just a wrapper.

CI runs the same suite on Python 3.10/3.11/3.12 via GitHub Actions (see .github/workflows/ci.yml).

Project links

• Main app: https://github.com/BradMorphsters/tuskledger
• Project site: https://www.tuskledger.com
• For agents browsing externally: https://www.tuskledger.com/llms.txt
• Issues / discussions: https://github.com/BradMorphsters/tuskledger-mcp/issues
• License: MIT