A scheduled, AI-driven daily expense tracker that processes Telegram check-ins, deduplicates entries, and syncs local Markdown ledgers with Google Sheets.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install hobohan-expense-tracker
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install hobohan-expense-tracker using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is Expense Tracker Agent Skill?
The Expense Tracker skill empowers developers to automate daily personal finance logging using cron-scheduled AI agents. Built with a focus on ease of use and reliability, this skill prompts users via Telegram at key intervals throughout the day to record spending. It processes these micro-logs using the deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash model, ensuring intelligent categorization, deduction logic, and formatting.
Instead of relying on heavy third-party SaaS tools, this skill maintains local ownership of your financial data by writing directly to simple Markdown files. Simultaneously, a synchronization engine pushes these updates to a centralized Google Sheet, offering the perfect blend of local file-based privacy and cloud-based convenience. If you want to optimize your financial workflows with Openclaw Skills, this agent provides a highly customizable template for secure ledger management.
Expense Tracker Agent Skill Use Cases
- Automated Expense Tracking: Log morning coffees, commutes, meals, and utilities directly through active Telegram notifications instead of manual data entry.
- Data Decentralization: Keep a robust, human-readable local history of your daily expenses in simple Markdown ledger formats.
- Multi-platform Expense Syncing: Sync localized developer ledgers with shared family or business Google Sheets automatically.
- Historical Financial Audits: Reconstruct missing ledger files by backfilling data programmatically from sheet rows.
How Expense Tracker Agent Skill Works
- Cron Check-in Triggers: Cron jobs trigger deepseek-powered check-ins at 10:00 AM, 1:30 PM, and 10:00 PM to capture spending from different parts of the day.
- AI Inference & Deduction: The model processes the natural language response, categorizing the expense, extracting the dollar amount, and adhering to strict duplicate checking rules.
- Local Ledger Formatting: Verified entries are appended to a date-stamped file in the ledger/YYYY-MM-DD.md directory with the format
- Category $Amount | Notes. - Google Sheets Sync: Every morning at 9:30 AM, a dedicated script reads the local Markdown entries, normalizes the data, avoids duplicate key collisions, and appends new transactions to Google Sheets.
Expense Tracker Agent Skill Setup
Prerequisites
- A Google Service Account JSON key saved at
/home/hobopi/.openclaw/secrets/google-service-account.json. - Access to a Telegram bot paired with your Openclaw environment.
Step 1: Workspace Setup
Ensure the execution scripts are in your local workspace:
mkdir -p scripts ledger
# Copy sync-ledger-to-sheet.py and gen-expense-data.py into scripts/
Step 2: Configure Cron Triggers
Setup your cron prompts to fire at scheduled times using Openclaw Skills integrations:
# Morning Check-in (10am)
openclaw schedule "Morning spend (coffee, breakfast, transport)" --cron "0 10 * * *" --model deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash
# Sync script (9:30am daily)
openclaw schedule "python3 scripts/sync-ledger-to-sheet.py" --cron "30 9 * * *"
Expense Tracker Agent Skill Data Schema & Taxonomy
Ledger File Schema
All expense items are stored locally in Markdown files named chronologically.
Path: ledger/YYYY-MM-DD.md
Syntax: - Category $Amount | Notes
Approved Expense Categories
| Category | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
Food & Drinks |
Daily snacks, coffees, dining out | Breakfast bagel, coffee |
Groceries |
Large-scale supermarket bulk shopping | Weekly household run |
Transportation |
Commuting, trains, ride shares | Metro card reload, Uber |
Household/Utilities |
Rent, electricity, home goods | Monthly internet bill |
Pet |
Pet food, vet bills, toys | Kibble |
Shopping |
Retail purchases, clothes, electronics | New keyboard |
Entertainment |
Movies, concerts, subscriptions | Streaming services |
AI |
Developer API costs, hosting, AI tools | Netlify subscription |
Other |
Anything not fitting above criteria | Custom notes |
Expense Tracker Agent Skill Advanced Features
- Intelligent Deduplication Engine: Parses localized ledger lines to build dedup keys based on dates and normalized amounts, completely preventing double-logging.
- Specialized Transport Check-in: Runs a secondary query every morning at 9:00 AM asking explicitly for the previous day's travel expenses to ensure accurate logging.
- Historical Backfill Script: Queries existing Google Sheet rows to reconstruct missing physical ledger files programmatically.
- Dashboard Ready Export: Generates normalized JSON files from local ledger data using
scripts/gen-expense-data.pyto power custom front-end visualization panels. - Highly Targeted Model Isolation: Enforces specific timeouts (up to 600s for late-night summaries) and pins execution to
deepseek/deepseek-v4-flashto ensure high speeds and low overhead cost.
SKILL.md
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