ynab

What This Skill Does

The YNAB (You Need A Budget) skill for OpenClaw is a powerful command-line interface wrapper that allows users to interact with their personal finance data directly through the agent. By integrating with the YNAB API, this skill enables seamless management of budgets, accounts, and transactions. Users can list transactions, search through spending history, categorize expenses, update budget amounts, and perform advanced account reconciliation without ever leaving the terminal. It acts as a bridge between your automated workflows and your financial data, providing programmatic access to every aspect of your YNAB setup.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your environment, use the OpenClaw management command:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/obviyus/ynab

Additionally, you must ensure the underlying CLI tool is present: npm i -g @stephendolan/ynab-cli

Configure your environment by obtaining an API key from the YNAB developer portal and setting the YNAB_API_KEY environment variable, or by running ynab auth login.

Use Cases

This skill is perfect for users who want to automate financial reporting or perform rapid budget maintenance. You can use it to pull lists of unapproved transactions for quick reconciliation, search for specific spending patterns (like recurring subscriptions), or update budget categories based on external triggers like a spreadsheet or a script. It is an excellent tool for power users looking to integrate financial logging into broader data-analysis pipelines.

Example Prompts

1. "Find all transactions labeled 'Amazon' from the last month that are over $50 and list them for me."
2. "Update my 'Groceries' category budget to $400 for November."
3. "Show me the current balance of my 'Checking' account and list the last 5 transactions."

Tips & Limitations

Note that YNAB API amounts are handled in standard currency formats rather than milliunits, making interactions more intuitive. Always be aware of the 200 request-per-hour rate limit enforced by YNAB, which may restrict high-frequency automation. Crucially, the API does not allow for the creation of new categories, groups, or payees; those must be managed manually in the official YNAB app. Use the --compact flag when working in terminal environments to keep your output clean and readable.