Skill: GridTRX Accounting

Demo

Watch the demo: Full accounting cycle in 15 minutes

What it does

Use this skill when the user asks you to "do the books," "categorize expenses," "import bank transactions," "run a balance sheet," or any bookkeeping task. GridTRX is a full-cycle double-entry accounting engine. You prompt in plain English, and the agent completes the books correctly. Every transaction balances. Every amount is deterministic. All data is local — no cloud services, no external APIs.

GridTRX produces a full set of auditable books: balance sheet, income statement, general ledger, trial balance, adjusting journal entries, retained earnings rollforward. Reports are exportable to CSV and PDF for any time period.

Architecture

GridTRX has three interfaces to the same engine (models.py → books.db):

1. MCP Server (preferred for agents) — Structured JSON tools. 20 tools (12 read, 8 write) wrapping models.py directly. No text parsing, typed parameters, deterministic output.
2. CLI (fallback for agents, power users) — One-shot shell commands via python cli.py. Zero dependencies beyond Python 3.7+ standard library. Any terminal-based agent can drive it via subprocess.
3. Browser UI (for humans) — Flask web interface at localhost:5000 via python run.py. Ledger browsing, report viewer with drill-down, comparative reports up to 13 columns, bank import with rule preview, reconciliation marking, dark mode.

All three hit the same models.py data layer. Nothing is out of sync. Use MCP when available. Fall back to CLI otherwise. The browser UI is for human review.

Prerequisites

Install dependencies before first use (one-time setup):

pip install -r requirements.txt

Or install individually: pip install mcp (MCP server), pip install flask (browser UI). The CLI has no dependencies beyond the Python 3.7+ standard library.

No packages are installed at runtime. All dependencies must be pre-installed.

MCP Setup

Add to the agent's MCP config with GRIDTRX_WORKSPACE set to the user's client folder:

{
  "command": "python",
  "args": ["/path/to/mcp_server.py"],
  "env": {"GRIDTRX_WORKSPACE": "/path/to/clients"}
}

GRIDTRX_WORKSPACE is mandatory — the MCP server will refuse to start without it. Any db_path outside the workspace is rejected at runtime. Every MCP tool takes db_path as its first parameter, which must resolve to a books.db file inside the workspace.

CLI Usage

GRIDTRX_WORKSPACE=/path/to/clients python cli.py /path/to/clients/acme/books.db <command>

Runs one command, prints plain text to stdout, exits. When GRIDTRX_WORKSPACE is set, the CLI enforces the same workspace boundary as the MCP server — paths outside the workspace are rejected.

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