A Simple Stack for a Finance Agent

Kim Wong

— 2 min read

🤖 Anyone can build their own agent to manage daily stuff — including personal finance (without linking your bank).

I recently built an agent that helps me track expenses + income + categories without relying on a “connect your bank” flow. And honestly? It solved a real pain point for me:

✅ No more manually updating
✅ No more juggling apps
✅ No more “where did my money go?” moments

🔧 High-level setup (simple view)

Here’s the flow:

  1. A self-hosted finance app (stores my actual data)
  2. APIs to interact with that data
  3. An MCP server
  4. The agent
  5. Chat UI
  6. Me (asking questions)

🧠 “Isn’t that too hard to build?”

Not as much as you’d think.

✨ Open source is your best friend 😉
People have built a LOT of the building blocks already on GitHub.
🔐(Quick note: open source is powerful — but always be mindful of licensing, maintenance, and security risks.)

My stack: Firefly III + MCP server + Chainlit — and I only built the agent layer, plus a bit of UI polishing. Everything else is plug-and-play.
🔐 (Quick note: if you do this, take security seriously. Auth, network access, secrets — all matter.)

Demo Snapshots:

Display my MCP Server.
Auto correct the tool call request when found missing information.
Request your approval to create new account
Me: Approved!
Create new transactions and list them in the dashboard

👀 Common concerns (and how to think about them)

1) “I’m not technical — can I still use this?”

Yes. You don’t necessarily need to build an agent from scratch.

You can often just:
📌 install an LLM app (anything! ex: Claude)
📌 plug in an MCP server
📌 and you’re off to the races — TaDa 🎉

2) “I don’t want the agent to see everything”

Totally fair.

Options:

  • ✅ Check your LLM provider’s data retention policy
  • 🛠️ Customize MCP tools to mask sensitive fields (ex: hide balances, remove account names, limit what the agent can access)
  • Run your self hosted LLM?!
  • This is a great topic and we can be creative! Let me know your thoughts! 👇

🚀 The big takeaway

Your agent can serve you in a short amount of time.
📂 Your data stays yours.
🚫 No middleman.
🚫 No app store gatekeeping.
✅ Just tools you control.

If money management is not your thing, what would you want an agent to manage for you — finance, scheduling, emails, health tracking? 👇

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