How to integrate Ynab MCP with Hermes

Hermes is a 24/7 autonomous agent that lives on your computer or server — it remembers what it learns and evolves as your usage grows. This guide explains the easiest and most robust way to connect your Ynab account to Hermes. You can do this through either Composio Connect CLI or Composio Connect MCP. For personal use we recommend the CLI, but you won't go wrong with MCP either.

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YNAB (You Need A Budget) is a personal finance and budgeting platform that helps users track spending, plan budgets, and reach savings goals. It's designed to give you more control over your money and reduce financial stress.

27 Tools

Introduction

Hermes is a 24/7 autonomous agent that lives on your computer or server — it remembers what it learns and evolves as your usage grows.

This guide explains the easiest and most robust way to connect your Ynab account to Hermes. You can do this through either Composio Connect CLI or Composio Connect MCP. For personal use we recommend the CLI, but you won't go wrong with MCP either.

Also integrate Ynab with

What is Composio Connect?

Composio Connect is a consumer offering that lets anyone plug 1,000+ applications directly into their agent harness — including Hermes. It can:

  • Search and load tools from relevant toolkits on-demand, reducing context usage.
  • Chain multiple tools to accomplish complex workflows via a remote workbench, without excessive back-and-forth with the LLM.
  • Manage app authentication end-to-end with zero manual overhead.

Integrating Ynab with Hermes

Using Composio Connect CLI

1. Install the Composio CLI

Run the install script directly, or paste https://composio.dev/hermes into your Hermes chat box to have it installed for you.

bash
curl -fsSL https://composio.dev/install | bash
Hermes authenticating with Composio

2. Authenticate

Once the CLI is installed, ask Hermes to authenticate with Composio.

3. Connect to Ynab

Ask your agent to connect to Ynab, or simply request any Ynab-related task. Hermes will prompt you to authenticate and authorize access.

4. Done. You're all set with a new Ynab connection.


Using Composio Connect MCP

1. Get your MCP URL and API Key

Go to dashboard.composio.dev and copy your Connect MCP URL and API key.

Copy MCP URL and API key from Composio dashboard

2. Open the Hermes config file

bash
nano ~/.hermes/config.yaml

3. Add the Composio Connect MCP server

bash
mcp_servers:
  composio:
    url: "https://connect.composio.dev/mcp"
    headers:
      x-consumer-api-key: "YOUR_COMPOSIO_API_KEY"
    connect_timeout: 60
    timeout: 180

Save with Ctrl + O, Enter, then exit with Ctrl + X.

4. Restart your Hermes agent

Once restarted, ask your agent to connect to Ynab or request any Ynab-related task. It will prompt you to authenticate and authorize access.

5. Done!

What is the Ynab MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Ynab MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Ynab account. It provides structured and secure access to your budgeting data, so your agent can perform actions like tracking expenses, creating and adjusting budgets, fetching transaction history, and analyzing spending patterns on your behalf.

  • Automated transaction tracking: Let your agent fetch, categorize, or summarize recent transactions to keep your spending up to date.
  • Budget creation and adjustment: Instruct your agent to set up new budgets, update existing categories, or reallocate funds between envelopes as your needs change.
  • Spending analysis and reporting: Have your agent analyze your expenses, highlight trends, or generate summaries to help you understand where your money goes.
  • Goal monitoring and progress updates: Ask your agent to track progress toward savings or debt payoff goals, and notify you of milestones or needed adjustments.
  • Account and balance synchronization: Enable your agent to pull up-to-date balances from multiple accounts, ensuring your budget always reflects the latest financial picture.

Way Forward

With Ynab connected, Hermes can now act on your behalf whenever it detects a relevant task or you ask it to.

From here, you can extend Hermes further:

  • Connect more apps: Calendar, Slack, Notion, Linear, and hundreds of others are available through the same Composio Connect setup. Each new integration compounds what Hermes can do for you.
  • Build workflows across tools: Once multiple apps are connected, Hermes can chain actions together — turn an email into a calendar invite, a Slack message into a Linear ticket, or a meeting note into a follow-up draft.
  • Let it learn your patterns: The more you use Hermes, the better it gets at anticipating how you'd handle recurring tasks. Give it feedback on drafts and decisions, and it will adapt.

If you run into trouble or want to share what you've built, join the community or check out the Docs for deeper configuration options.

TOOLS

Supported Tools

Every Ynab action and event your agent gets out of the box.

Create a new account in a budget

Tool to create a new account in a budget.

Create Scheduled Transaction

Creates a scheduled (recurring) transaction in a YNAB budget.

Delete Scheduled Transaction

Permanently deletes a scheduled transaction from a YNAB budget.

Get Account by ID

Tool to retrieve a single account resource.

Get Budget By ID

Retrieve a complete budget export by ID, including all accounts, categories, payees, and transactions.

Get Budget Month

Tool to retrieve a specific budget month.

Get Budget Settings

Tool to retrieve budget-level settings.

Get Category by ID

Retrieve a single YNAB budget category by its ID.

Get Month Category By ID

Tool to retrieve a single category for a specific budget month.

Get Payee by ID

Tool to retrieve a single payee by its ID.

Get Scheduled Transaction by ID

Tool to retrieve a single scheduled transaction.

Get Transaction by ID

Tool to retrieve a single transaction by its ID.

Get Authorized User

Tool to retrieve the authorized user's information.

List Accounts

Retrieves all accounts for a specified YNAB budget.

List Budgets

Retrieves all budgets accessible to the authenticated YNAB user.

List Categories

Tool to list all category groups and their categories for a budget.

List Budget Months

Tool to list months for a budget with summary information.

List Payee Locations

Retrieves all GPS locations associated with payees in a budget.

List Payee Locations by Payee

Retrieves all GPS locations associated with a specific payee in a budget.

List payees in a budget

Tool to list payees in a budget.

List Scheduled Transactions

List all scheduled (recurring) transactions for a YNAB budget.

List Transactions

Tool to list transactions in a budget.

List Transactions by Account

Tool to list transactions for a specific account.

List Transactions by Category

Tool to list transactions for a specific category (excludes pending).

List Transactions by Payee

Tool to list transactions for a specific payee in a budget.

Update Payee

Tool to update a payee.

Update Scheduled Transaction

Update an existing scheduled transaction in YNAB.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

With a standalone Ynab MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Ynab tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Ynab and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Yes, you can. Hermes fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Ynab tools.

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Ynab scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Ynab data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

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