Launched this week
Ray
Your personal CFO in the terminal
444 followers
Your personal CFO in the terminal
444 followers
Most personal finance apps show you charts. Ray tells you what to do and actually helps you plan. A terminal-based CFO that reads your real transactions, remembers your goals, and runs on your computer — not someone else's server. Open source. Free with your own keys.
Ray
Terminal based CFO is a cool concept! Curious -- how does it handle planning when your spending patterns are irregular? Like freelancer income that's different every month.
Ray
@antoninkus This is actually where it's super helpful - since you can give it context of things like when you expect to get paid, some clients that are in the pipeline, and then have it give you different scenarios given that unpredictability. It could even help you understand how much you should be charging clients in order to help reach your goals.
Hello clark, I want to use your 'Ray' app , but I am super novice that I don't know even how to start your app.
I clicked your 'g-ray finance' but how to start with this Github?
If there is super simple guideline for the beginners like me who does not know even what the code is, then it will be more better for super novice beginners like me!
It sounds amazing to read the transactions, remember the goals, and run in my computer.
Thanks Nice work Clark!
Ray
@jihwankim55 thanks for the kind words, I will work on a guide! great idea!
In the meantime, here's all you need:
1. Open Terminal
- On Mac: press Cmd + Space, type "Terminal", hit Enter
- On Windows: press the Windows key, type "Command Prompt", hit Enter
2. Install Ray
type `npm install -g ray-finance` into the terminal
(If this gives an error, you need Node.js first — grab it at nodejs.org, install it, then run the command above again)
3. Set up
Type `ray setup` into the terminal
Pick "Managed/Pro" when it asks. It'll walk you through everything — just follow the prompts. Takes about 2 minutes.
4. Connect your bank
Type `ray link` into the terminal
5. Start using it
Type `ray` to start chatting with your money
Other commands to try
`ray --help` will show you all the commands you can try out
`ray demo` then `ray --demo` to use fake accounts and test it out
Ray
@jihwankim55 Made a guide for you! https://rayfinance.app/guides/beginners
@clark_dinnison Clark, I almost could enter your 'Ray' website, but it shows like this how can I go for next step? I used 'Spine AI' asking the procedure, Spine AI was really good, it was not that easy for like beginners who don't know the code though. Thanks for the instruction!
Ray
@jihwankim55 Hi Ji - did you receive & setup API credentials from Plaid? you might see that error if you did not enter them or entered them incorrectly. I'll improve that error message so it's clear.
Feel free to email me at clark@rayfinance.app and I can help you get set up.
@clark_dinnison Yeah thanks clark I will find out in email how to solve! Thanks again!
Much needed! Since most tools fail at behavior change like you mentioned, so what specifically makes ray actually change user actions rather than just inform them???
Ray
@lak7 Great question. Two things.
The first is that it has opinions. Most finance apps show you a pie chart and go "here's your spending." Ray will straight up say "you're pacing $340 over groceries this month and if that keeps up your house fund slips by about three weeks." It connects the thing you're doing right now to the thing you said you cared about. That hit different for me than just watching a number turn red.
The second is the daily score and streaks - "Kitchen Hero" for no restaurants in a week, "Monk Mode" for five zero-spend days. I almost didn't ship it because it felt gimmicky. Turns out not wanting to break a streak works on my brain in a way that "you're 12% over budget" never did.
Hi @clark_dinnison this looks like a great product. I use Chase bank, which only supports OAuth via Plaid. The free version does not appear to support OAuth, does the paid version support it?
Ray
@overemployeddave yes the Ray Pro plan supports Chase bank!
@clark_dinnison Perfect. I will sign up when I get home
Ray
@overemployeddave great! Email me if you have any questions getting set up clark@rayfinance.app
yo this is cool i personally as well use claude code to manage all my money as json files and then there is a visual dashboard.. in html to serve all that data for me i a quick glance.. my one doubt is privacy even tho i currently use claude code so my data does goes to anthropic.. but soon i will switch to a local running gemma 4 (not sure if it will be capable ) i suppose this is open source privacy first and i can plug in a local model right ?
Ray
@krn_btra Ha, love the Claude Code + JSON + HTML dashboard setup — very much the same energy that led to building Ray.
You're right, it's open source and local-first — all your financial data stays in an encrypted SQLite database on your machine, never touches a Ray server. Right now it uses the Anthropic API for the AI chat, and your transactions are PII-masked before they leave your machine.
Bring-your-own-model is on the roadmap and actively being worked on — the goal is to let you point Ray at any provider (OpenAI, ollama, local models, etc.). So running something like Gemma 4 locally for fully air-gapped usage is exactly the kind of setup we want to support. Stay tuned on that one.
does this work well if you have accounts across multiple banks? ive been trying to get a unified view of everything for months and most apps either dont support my bank or require connecting through some third-party aggregator which feels sketchy. the terminal-based approach is interesting though — at least i know where my data lives
Ray
@lumm Yep, that's exactly the use case I built this for. You run `ray link` for each bank and it connects through Plaid, which covers 12,000+ institutions in the US/Canada/UK. You can link as many as you need — checking, savings, credit cards, loans, investments all show up in one place. `ray accounts` gives you the unified view grouped by institution with a net worth total at the bottom, and the AI has the full picture across all of them when you're chatting.
On the "sketchy third-party aggregator" point — Plaid is the aggregator under the hood (same one Venmo, Robinhood, etc. use), but the difference is your data never hits a Ray server. The Plaid connection syncs directly to an encrypted SQLite database on your machine. No cloud, no account to create. You can also add accounts manually (`ray add`) for things Plaid doesn't cover, like a home or car.