ynab-api

What This Skill Does

The YNAB API skill for OpenClaw provides a comprehensive toolkit for automating and enhancing your You Need A Budget (YNAB) experience. It goes beyond basic transaction entry by offering features like automated goal progress tracking, scheduled transaction alerts for upcoming bills, monitoring your 'Age of Money' for financial stability insights, and conducting month-over-month spending analysis. The skill is designed to proactively alert you to potential overspending and provides an automated daily check-in, delivering a summary of your budget status via messaging platforms like WhatsApp or Telegram. It also includes smart categorization capabilities, learning from your transaction history to categorize new entries more effectively, and supports real transfer tracking for accurate linked account management.

Installation

To install the YNAB API skill, you will need your YNAB Personal Access Token and Budget ID.

1. Obtain YNAB API Credentials:

   • Navigate to the developer settings in your YNAB account: https://app.ynab.com/settings/developer.
   • Click "New Token" to generate a new Personal Access Token and copy it.
   • Find your Budget ID in the URL of your YNAB budget. For example, in https://app.ynab.com/abc123..., the Budget ID is abc123....

2. Configure the Skill:

   • Create a configuration file at ~/.config/ynab/config.json and populate it with your API key and Budget ID:

     {
       "api_key": "YOUR_YNAB_TOKEN_HERE",
       "budget_id": "YOUR_BUDGET_ID_HERE"
     }
     

   • Alternatively, you can set these as environment variables:

     export YNAB_API_KEY="your_token"
     export YNAB_BUDGET_ID="your_budget_id"
     

3. Set Up Automated Reports (Recommended):

   • For a seamless setup of automated reports and tasks, run the provided script:

     /home/node/clawd/skills/ynab-api/scripts/setup-automation.sh
     

   • This script interactively creates recommended cron jobs, including a daily budget check, weekly spending review, mid-month goal check, and upcoming bills alert. You can preview the changes before they are applied using the --dry-run flag.
   • For manual setup, you can use the openclaw cron add command with specific schedules and tasks.

4. Test Your Setup:

   • Verify the installation by running a test command, such as:

     /home/node/clawd/skills/ynab-api/scripts/goals-progress.sh
     

Use Cases

• Automated Budget Monitoring: Receive daily summaries of your budget status, including Age of Money and alerts for potential overspending, directly to your preferred messaging app.
• Financial Health Tracking: Monitor key financial metrics like Age of Money and goal progress to understand and improve your financial stability.
• Bill Management: Get timely alerts for upcoming bills, ensuring you never miss a payment deadline.
• Spending Analysis: Gain insights into your spending habits with month-over-month comparisons and identify areas where you can save.
• Data Consistency: Enforce best practices for transaction categorization to maintain accurate budget tracking within YNAB.

Example Prompts

• "OpenClaw, what's my current Age of Money and are there any upcoming bills for tomorrow?"
• "Show me a report of my spending trends compared to last month for my grocery and dining out categories."
• "Are any of my budget categories close to being overspent today?"

Tips & Limitations

Tips:

• Categorize Immediately: Always assign a category to transactions as soon as they are entered. Uncategorized transactions can disrupt tracking and reporting.
• Consistent Payee Naming: When adding new transactions, search for existing entries with the same payee name to ensure consistent categorization. This improves the accuracy of spending analysis and smart categorization features.
• Leverage Automation: Utilize the setup-automation.sh script to fully benefit from scheduled reports and alerts.

Limitations:

• This skill requires access to the YNAB API and proper configuration, including a valid API key and Budget ID.
• The effectiveness of smart categorization relies on the historical data available in your YNAB budget. A longer history leads to better predictions.
• Automated reports are dependent on the correct setup of cron jobs and the availability of the OpenClaw agent to execute them.