Connect to Expense

A feature can be finished and still be unusable. Expense has had an MCP server for a while: point an assistant at https://expense.labnotes.org/mcp, it discovers the OAuth flow, you sign in once. That part works. The part that did not was the last mile. The how

Weekend Reading — Skeletons in the closet

Neatnik "Everything can be accessible." 🎉🎉🎉 Fastmail just approved Expense’s OAuth client. I believe we's now the first expense tracking app that can collect receipts from Fastmail (and JMAP in general). To me, because I use Fastmail for my emails, it's more exciting than

Expense: One receipt, once

There are four ways for the same receipt to enter Expense: forward it by email, drag the file into the editor, let the MCP tool fetch it, connect a mailbox and have it imported for you. Each route used to check metadata on its own, so the same PDF arriving

Finding things in Expense

The search box on the expense list in Expense understands fields now. report:, category:, and merchant: match exactly, case-insensitive. description: matches anywhere in the description. Values can contain spaces, so report:2026 travel is one filter and not two. Repeat a key and the values OR together. Mix keys

Weekend Reading — It’s a good day to have a great day

Steven Hoefer Fold I love this. ❤️ It's yet another one-person app coded with AI that solves the eternal todo list problem. Sounds utterly redundant, but when you're not building for a huge target market, you can make some insightful choices. Write the task, optional date

How Expense reads a receipt

Every receipt that lands in Expense has to become four fields: merchant, date, amount, category. A model can do that. Model calls also cost money and seconds, so the pipeline is built around not making them. Most receipts never reach one. Text comes first. An email body or a PDF

Cmd+K at Expense

Expense now has a command palette. Press Cmd+K anywhere (Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux) and type what you want to do: go somewhere, add something, search, export. The mouse is optional. The keys I actually use: * g e expenses, g r reports, g l emails, g x reconcile,

Weekend Reading — At the POST office trying to GET my mail

A nosy polar bear and a lucky squirrel: Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 shortlist Some wildlife photos for your viewing pleasure. The world is changing. This weekend we got a post about the software industry emulating fast fashion, because AI makes software so cheap to produce. We'll

Connect Fastmail: your receipts move from inbox to Expense

Most expense apps auto-import receipts from Gmail. If your mail lives anywhere else, you are the import. Expense connects to FastMail directly now. Link your inbox once and receipts file themselves as they arrive, merchant, amount, and category filled in, dated by the email. Two steps: 1. In FastMail,