Expense Tracker

Use When

• •User wants to log an expense or purchase
• •User asks to categorize their spending
• •User wants a spending summary or report
• •User asks "how much did I spend on X?"
• •User wants to track business vs personal expenses
• •User shares receipts or bank statements to process

Don't Use When

• •User wants tax-specific advice (use tax-prep instead)
• •User wants to create an invoice (use invoice-generator instead)

How It Works

Expenses are stored as structured data in your cloud storage. Each expense has:

• •Date: When the expense occurred
• •Amount: How much was spent
• •Category: What type of expense
• •Description: What it was for
• •Tags: Optional labels (business, personal, tax-deductible, etc.)

Commands

Log an expense

When the user mentions a purchase or expense, save it:

echo '{"date":"2026-02-12","amount":49.99,"category":"software","description":"GitHub Copilot subscription","tags":["business","tax-deductible"]}' | bash /root/workspace/skills/s8t/files.sh write data/expenses/2026-02.jsonl

Read expenses

bash /root/workspace/skills/s8t/files.sh read data/expenses/2026-02.jsonl

Categories

Standard expense categories:

• •housing: Rent, mortgage, utilities, insurance
• •food: Groceries, restaurants, delivery
• •transport: Gas, public transit, rideshare, parking
• •software: Subscriptions, tools, SaaS
• •hardware: Computers, equipment, peripherals
• •travel: Flights, hotels, car rental
• •meals: Client/business meals
• •office: Supplies, furniture, coworking
• •education: Courses, books, conferences
• •health: Insurance, medical, gym
• •entertainment: Movies, games, events
• •other: Everything else

Reports

When asked for a summary, produce:

Monthly Summary

Category Breakdown

Show top spending categories with trends vs previous month.

Storage Format

• •Store expenses as JSONL (one JSON object per line) in data/expenses/YYYY-MM.jsonl
• •Each line: {"date":"YYYY-MM-DD","amount":XX.XX,"category":"cat","description":"desc","tags":["tag1"]}
• •This allows easy appending and line-by-line reading

Best Practices

• •Always confirm the amount and category with the user
• •Default currency is USD unless told otherwise
• •Round to 2 decimal places
• •Ask if an expense is business or personal when unclear
• •Tag tax-deductible expenses for easy filtering at tax time