By name: expense_tracker description: User wants to track, categorize, or analyze their expenses and spending
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 | Amount | % of Total |
|---|---|---|
| Software | $XXX | XX% |
| Food | $XXX | XX% |
| Total | $X,XXX | 100% |
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