"Six months ago, everyone was talking about MCPs. And I was like, screw MCPs. Every MCP would be better as a CLI."

— Peter Steinberger, Founder of OpenClaw Watch on YouTube (~2:39:00) | Lex Fridman Podcast #491

PocketSmith CLI

A production-ready command-line interface for the PocketSmith personal finance forecasting API. Manage accounts, transactions, budgets, categories, and financial forecasts directly from your terminal.

Disclaimer: This is an unofficial CLI tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by PocketSmith Limited.

Features

• User — Get current user info and profile
• Accounts — List and inspect all financial accounts
• Transactions — List, get, and create transactions with filtering
• Categories — Browse expense/income categories
• Budgets — View budget analysis and tracking
• Savings — View savings goals and balances
• Forecast — Access financial forecast data
• JSON output — All commands support --json for scripting and piping
• Colorized output — Clean, readable terminal output with chalk

Why CLI > MCP

MCP servers are complex, stateful, and require a running server process. A CLI is:

• Simpler — Just a binary you call directly
• Composable — Pipe output to jq, grep, awk, and other tools
• Scriptable — Use in shell scripts, CI/CD pipelines, cron jobs
• Debuggable — See exactly what's happening with --json flag
• AI-friendly — AI agents can call CLIs just as easily as MCPs, with less overhead

Installation

npm install -g @ktmcp-cli/pocketsmith

Authentication Setup

PocketSmith uses API key authentication. Get your key from your PocketSmith account settings.

1. Get your API key

1. Log in to pocketsmith.com
2. Go to Account Settings > Manage API Keys
3. Create a new Developer Key

2. Configure the CLI

pocketsmith config set --api-key YOUR_API_KEY

3. Verify

pocketsmith user me

Commands

Configuration

# Set API key
pocketsmith config set --api-key <key>

# Show current config
pocketsmith config show

User

# Get current user info
pocketsmith user me
pocketsmith user me --json

Accounts

# List all accounts
pocketsmith accounts list

# Get account details
pocketsmith accounts get <account-id>

Transactions

# List transactions for an account
pocketsmith transactions list <account-id>

# Filter by date
pocketsmith transactions list <account-id> --start-date 2024-01-01 --end-date 2024-01-31

# Search transactions
pocketsmith transactions list <account-id> --search "grocery"

# Get a specific transaction
pocketsmith transactions get <transaction-id>

# Create a transaction
pocketsmith transactions create <account-id> \
  --date 2024-01-15 \
  --amount -42.50 \
  --payee "Whole Foods"

Categories

# List all categories
pocketsmith categories list

Budgets

# View budget analysis
pocketsmith budgets list

Savings

# View savings goals
pocketsmith savings list

Forecast

# Show financial forecast
pocketsmith forecast show

JSON Output

All commands support --json for machine-readable output:

# Get all accounts as JSON
pocketsmith accounts list --json

# Pipe to jq for filtering
pocketsmith accounts list --json | jq '.[] | select(.type == "bank") | {id: .id, name: .title, balance: .current_balance}'

# Get transactions as JSON
pocketsmith transactions list <account-id> --json | jq '.[] | select(.amount < 0) | {date: .date, payee: .payee, amount: .amount}'

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at github.com/ktmcp-cli/pocketsmith.

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.

Part of the KTMCP CLI project — replacing MCPs with simple, composable CLIs.