Lunchmoney MCP Server

LunchMoney MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server implementation for LunchMoney, providing programmatic access to personal finance management through LunchMoney's API. Also available as an MCP Bundle (.mcpb) for easy installation in Claude Desktop.

Heads up — v2.0.0 is a breaking release. This server now targets LunchMoney's v2 API (https://api.lunchmoney.dev/v2, currently in alpha). It is not backwards-compatible with v1.x of this server: tool names, fields, and endpoint shapes have changed (for example, assets is now manual_accounts, tags arrays are now tag_ids, transaction asset_id is now manual_account_id, the debit_as_negative toggle is gone, and the budget summary moved to a new /summary endpoint). See CHANGELOG.md for the full list. If you depend on v1.x, pin @akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp@^1.4.3.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Usage
  • Installation Options
    • MCP Bundle
    • Claude Code CLI
    • Codex CLI
    • Manual MCP Configuration
  • Standalone Server
• Remote Deployments
• Example Prompts
• Available Tools
• Development
• API Reference
• Contributing
• License

Overview

This MCP server enables AI assistants and other MCP clients to interact with LunchMoney data, allowing for automated financial insights, transaction management, budgeting, and more.

Features

Comprehensive Tool Coverage

• User Management - Access user account details
• Categories - Full CRUD on categories and category groups
• Tags - Full CRUD for transaction tags
• Transactions - Full CRUD with advanced filtering, bulk update, bulk delete, splits, groups, and file attachments
• Recurring Items - Track and manage recurring expenses, including system-suggested items
• Budgets - Per-period budget summary, account-wide budget settings, upsert, and delete
• Manual Accounts - Full CRUD for manually-managed accounts (formerly known as "assets")
• Plaid Accounts - List, retrieve, and trigger sync of connected bank accounts
• Cryptocurrency - Track synced and manual crypto holdings through LunchMoney's v1 crypto endpoints

Key Capabilities

• Full integration with LunchMoney API v2 (alpha)
• Type-safe implementation with TypeScript and Zod validation
• Token-efficient responses using TOON encoding instead of JSON, reducing token usage in AI conversations
• Modular architecture for easy extension
• Standard MCP server implementation using stdio transport

Usage

Installation Options

MCP Bundle (.mcpb) - Recommended

The easiest way to install this server is as an MCP Bundle in Claude Desktop:

1. Download the latest .mcpb file from the releases page
2. Open Claude Desktop and go to Extensions
3. Click "Install Extension" and select the downloaded .mcpb file
4. Enter your LunchMoney API token when prompted (get it from LunchMoney Developer Settings)
5. The LunchMoney tools will be immediately available

Add the LunchMoney MCP server to Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport stdio --env LUNCHMONEY_API_TOKEN=your-api-token-here lunchmoney -- npx -y @akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp

To enable debug logging:

claude mcp add --transport stdio --env LUNCHMONEY_API_TOKEN=your-api-token-here --env LUNCHMONEY_DEBUG=true lunchmoney -- npx -y @akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp

Verify the server was added:

claude mcp list
claude mcp get lunchmoney

Add the LunchMoney MCP server to Codex:

codex mcp add lunchmoney --env LUNCHMONEY_API_TOKEN=your-api-token-here -- npx -y @akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp

To enable debug logging:

codex mcp add lunchmoney --env LUNCHMONEY_API_TOKEN=your-api-token-here --env LUNCHMONEY_DEBUG=true -- npx -y @akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp

Verify the server was added:

codex mcp list
codex mcp get lunchmoney

To use this MCP server with any MCP-compatible client (such as Claude Desktop), you need to add it to the client's configuration.

Configuration

The server can be configured in your MCP client's configuration file. The exact location and format may vary by client, but typically follows this pattern:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "lunchmoney": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": ["@akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp"],
            "env": {
                "LUNCHMONEY_API_TOKEN": "your-api-token-here",
                "LUNCHMONEY_DEBUG": "true"
            }
        }
    }
}

Note: LUNCHMONEY_DEBUG is optional. Set it to "true" to enable debug logging of API requests and responses to stderr. Useful for troubleshooting.

Replace "your-api-token-here" with your actual LunchMoney API token from LunchMoney Developer Settings.

Common MCP Client Configuration Locations

Different MCP clients store their configuration in different locations:

• Claude Desktop:

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
  • Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

• Other MCP Clients: Check your client's documentation for the configuration file location.

Setup Steps

1. Locate your MCP client's configuration file (create it if it doesn't exist).
2. Add the LunchMoney server configuration to the mcpServers section.
3. Save the file and restart your MCP client.
4. The LunchMoney tools should now be available in your client.

Requirements

• Node.js 16+ installed on your system
• npx available in your system PATH
• Valid LunchMoney API token with appropriate permissions

Standalone Server

# Run with npx
LUNCHMONEY_API_TOKEN="your-api-token" npx @akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp

Remote Deployments

The bundled stdio binary covers desktop MCP clients, but Claude on mobile and the custom connectors feature in claude.ai only speak HTTP. There are two ways to expose this server remotely.

Turnkey: Cloudflare Workers

lunchmoney-mcp-cloudflare wraps this package as a Cloudflare Worker with Google sign-in and an email allowlist in front of the MCP endpoint. The whole stack fits inside Cloudflare's and Google Cloud's free tiers, and a setup.sh wizard handles KV creation, OAuth client setup, secrets, and deploy in one walkthrough. Each authenticated user runs in their own Durable Object, so the config singleton stays per-user.

Self-hosted: HTTP transport on your own host

For a single-user deployment, wire createServer() into StreamableHTTPServerTransport and serve it from any Node HTTP framework. Example with Express:

import express from "express";
import { createServer } from "@akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp/server";
import { initializeConfig } from "@akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp/config";
import { StreamableHTTPServerTransport } from "@modelcontextprotocol/sdk/server/streamableHttp.js";

initializeConfig(process.env.LUNCHMONEY_API_TOKEN!);
const server = createServer("1.0.0");

const transport = new StreamableHTTPServerTransport({
    sessionIdGenerator: () => crypto.randomUUID(),
});
await server.connect(transport);

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());
app.all("/mcp", (req, res) => transport.handleRequest(req, res, req.body));
app.listen(3000);

Swap Express for Hono (via @hono/node-server) or Fastify if you prefer — the transport only needs Node's IncomingMessage and ServerResponse. Add your own auth in front of /mcp — the package ships no transport-level auth.

Multi-tenant warning. This pattern serves one user from one process with one shared API token. To serve multiple users from a single Node process you'd hit the single-tenant config singleton; fork the process per user or use the Cloudflare option above (each user gets their own isolate).

Example Prompts

Here are some example prompts you can use with the LunchMoney MCP server:

Account Overview

• "Show me my LunchMoney account details"
• "What's my current account status?"

Category Management

• "List all my spending categories"
• "Create a new category called 'Subscriptions' with a monthly budget of $100"
• "Show me details for my 'Food & Dining' category"
• "Create a category group for all my entertainment expenses"
• "Delete the 'Unused Category' and reassign its transactions to 'Miscellaneous'"

Transaction Management

• "Show me all transactions from last month"
• "Find all transactions over $100 in the past week"
• "Create a new expense for $45.99 at Amazon in the Shopping category"
• "Update transaction #12345 to change the amount to $50"
• "Show me all pending transactions"
• "Group these coffee shop transactions together"

Budgeting

• "Show me my budget summary for this month"
• "Set a budget of $500 for Groceries this month"
• "Remove the budget for Entertainment category"
• "How much have I spent vs budgeted in each category?"

Manual Account Tracking

• "List all my manual accounts"
• "Create a new manual account for my savings account with a balance of $10,000"
• "Update my investment account balance to $25,000"
• "Close my old credit card account"

Recurring Expenses

• "Show me all my recurring expenses"
• "What subscriptions do I have?"
• "List recurring items for the next 3 months"

Banking Integration

• "Show me all my connected Plaid accounts"
• "Refresh my bank account data"
• "Trigger a sync for my checking account"

Cryptocurrency

• "Show me all my crypto holdings"
• "Update my Bitcoin balance to 0.5 BTC"
• "List all my manually tracked crypto assets"

Analysis & Insights

• "What are my top spending categories this month?"
• "Show me all transactions tagged as 'vacation'"
• "Find all transactions at coffee shops"
• "List all transactions that need to be categorized"

Available Tools

User Tools

• get_user - Retrieve current user details

Category Tools

• get_all_categories - List all categories (supports format and is_group filters)
• get_single_category - Get details for a specific category or category group
• create_category - Create a category or category group (set is_group=true plus children)
• update_category - Update properties; replaces the children list on category groups
• delete_category - Delete a category; pass force=true to override dependency check

Tag Tools

• get_all_tags - List all tags
• get_single_tag - Get a tag by ID
• create_tag - Create a new tag
• update_tag - Update tag properties
• delete_tag - Delete a tag (with force to override dependents)

Transaction Tools

• get_transactions - List transactions with extensive filtering options (date range, account, category, tag, status, pending, metadata, files, etc)
• get_single_transaction - Get full transaction details (always includes plaid_metadata, custom_metadata, files, and children for split/group parents)
• create_transactions - Insert 1–500 transactions in one call
• update_transaction - Partial update of one transaction
• delete_transaction - Delete one transaction (cannot be split/group)
• update_transactions_bulk - Bulk update 1–500 transactions
• delete_transactions_bulk - Bulk delete 1–500 transactions by ID
• create_transaction_group - Create a transaction group from existing transactions
• delete_transaction_group - Ungroup a transaction group
• split_transaction - Split a transaction into 2–500 children
• unsplit_transaction - Undo a previous split
• attach_file_to_transaction - Upload a local file (jpeg/png/heic/heif/pdf, ≤10MB)
• get_transaction_attachment_url - Get a signed download URL for a file attachment
• delete_transaction_attachment - Delete a file attachment

Recurring Items Tools

• get_recurring_items - List recurring items for a date range (include_suggested for system suggestions)
• get_single_recurring_item - Get a recurring item by ID

Budget Tools

• get_budget_summary - Per-category budget summary (backed by /summary); supports occurrences, totals, rollover-pool toggles
• get_budget_settings - Account-wide budget period and display settings
• upsert_budget - Create or update a budget for a category and period
• remove_budget - Remove a budget for a category and period

Manual Account Tools

• get_all_manual_accounts - List all manually-managed accounts (formerly "assets")
• get_single_manual_account - Get a manual account by ID
• create_manual_account - Create a new manually-managed account
• update_manual_account - Update properties of a manual account
• delete_manual_account - Delete a manual account; optionally also delete its transactions / balance history

Plaid Account Tools

• get_all_plaid_accounts - List all connected Plaid accounts
• get_single_plaid_account - Get a Plaid account by ID
• trigger_plaid_fetch - Trigger fetch of latest data from Plaid (optionally scoped to a date range or account)

Crypto Tools

• get_all_crypto - List synced and manual cryptocurrency holdings from /v1/crypto
• update_manual_crypto - Update a manually-managed cryptocurrency asset via /v1/crypto/manual/:id

Development

Project Structure

lunchmoney-mcp/
├── src/
│   ├── index.ts           # Server entry point
│   ├── config.ts          # Configuration management
│   ├── types.ts           # TypeScript type definitions
│   └── tools/             # Tool implementations
│       ├── user.ts
│       ├── categories.ts
│       ├── tags.ts
│       ├── transactions.ts
│       ├── recurring-items.ts
│       ├── budgets.ts
│       ├── manual-accounts.ts
│       ├── plaid-accounts.ts
│       └── crypto.ts
├── build/                 # Compiled JavaScript output
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
└── README.md

Building

# Build the MCP server
npm run build

# Build MCPB package for distribution
npm run build:mcpb

Adding New Tools

1. Create a new file in src/tools/
2. Implement tool handlers using the MCP SDK
3. Register tools in src/index.ts
4. Add types to src/types.ts if needed

Embedding as a library

The package exposes subpath entry points so it can be embedded in a custom transport (for example, a Cloudflare Worker that serves the MCP protocol over HTTP) rather than only the bundled stdio binary:

import { createServer } from "@akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp/server";
import { initializeConfig } from "@akutishevsky/lunchmoney-mcp/config";

initializeConfig(process.env.LUNCHMONEY_API_TOKEN!);
const server = createServer("1.0.0");
// connect `server` to whatever transport you need

initializeConfig must be called before any tool is invoked, or the first request throws "Configuration not initialized.".

Single-tenant assumption. The config is held in a module-level singleton. That is safe on per-isolate runtimes — each user gets their own isolate, so there is no shared mutable state to race on. It is not safe on shared-process multi-tenant Node hosts (e.g. one Express or Hono process serving multiple users): concurrent initializeConfig calls would race and leak tokens between requests. Those consumers need to fork per-user or refactor the singleton before exposing the package.

API Reference

The server implements the full LunchMoney API v2. For detailed API documentation, see:

• LunchMoney v2 API Documentation
• v2 Migration Guide
• Model Context Protocol Specification

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

MIT License