How-to

How to ask your agent about this month's spending

3 min read
Ask your agent 'break down my spending this month by category' and it will call get_spending_summary with group_by:category. Want to know what changed? Ask 'how does March compare to February?' and it runs the summary twice. Follow up with 'what drove the biggest difference?' and it dives into individual transactions.

The three prompts

Three progressively deeper questions cover 90% of what you’d ever want to know about a month. Each one lets the agent pick the right MCP tool without you thinking about it.

Prompt 1: category breakdown

“Break down my spending this month by category.”

Your agent will call get_spending_summary with group_by: “category” and a start_date matching the first of the current month. You’ll get back a sorted list: rent + utilities, food + drink, transportation, entertainment, and so on.

Pro tip: the agent uses live data. If a charge posted thirty seconds ago, it’s in the answer.

Prompt 2: month-over-month

“How does this month compare to last month?”

Now the agent calls get_monthly_cashflow twice — once for the current month, once for the prior month — and diffs them. Expect a summary that looks like:

“Income is up $240 (raise). Expenses are up $612, driven by $400 more in groceries and $180 more in dining out. Net cashflow is down $372.”

You didn’t have to specify dates, aggregate anything, or know which tool to call. The agent picked.

Prompt 3: drill into the biggest mover

“Why was groceries up? Show me every charge.”

Now the agent pivots to list_transactions filtered by category: “FOOD_AND_DRINK” for the current month. You’ll see the actual transactions that drove the number up. Usually it’s something obvious like two extra Instacart orders or a Costco run.

From here you can keep drilling: “Which of those were Instacart?” or “Was any single charge over $200?” The agent threads the prior tool calls and narrows.

Save it as a skill

If you run this same three-question flow every month (most people do), save it as a Claude Code slash command. BankBridge ships with /monthly-money-review built in: it runs category breakdown, month-over-month, top movers, and a one-paragraph summary in a single shot. Install the Claude Code plugin and the command is yours.

FAQ

Which MCP tool does the agent actually call?

get_spending_summary for the breakdown, list_transactions for the drill-down, and get_monthly_cashflow for income vs expenses. Your agent picks between them based on your question — no tool names to memorize.

How accurate is 'this month'?

As accurate as your bank. Every agent query live-fetches — no caching on our end. If a charge posted 30 seconds ago, it shows up.

Can I pin this as a slash command?

Yes. In Claude Code, add the BankBridge plugin and use /spending-trend or /monthly-money-review. Both are prompts that call these tools in a predictable shape.