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Getting Started

1. Add the connector

In Claude, add a custom connector with this URL:

https://planner.moosejudge.com/mcp

No headers or extra fields are needed — just the URL. Claude handles the rest.

2. Planner's own screen

Before you get to YNAB, Claude will take you to a short page hosted by Planner itself. This is Planner asking what level of access to request on your behalf — it comes first because YNAB only lets Planner ask for one level of access per authorization, so you choose it here.

The screen has a single checkbox, unchecked by default:

Allow Planner to make changes to my budget

  • Leave it unchecked and Planner will ask YNAB for read-only access: Claude can look up anything in your budget but cannot change it.
  • Check it and Planner will ask YNAB for full access: Claude can also make changes, like categorizing a transaction or adjusting a budgeted amount.

If the person running this Planner deployment has not turned write access on, the checkbox still appears but is greyed out and does nothing — Planner will only ever ask YNAB for read-only access, whatever you select. This is a setting for the whole deployment, not something an individual user can change from this screen.

3. YNAB's own screen

After Planner's screen, you're sent to YNAB itself to approve the connection. This is the normal YNAB authorization screen you'd see for any third-party app — review it and approve to finish connecting.

4. What read-only means in practice

With read-only access, everything that looks something up works normally: checking account balances, category budgets, transaction history, payees, Age of Money, net worth, and so on. Claude simply cannot make changes on your behalf — no new or edited transactions, no categorization, no adjustments to a budgeted amount, no changes to a scheduled transaction. If you ask Claude to change something and you only granted read-only access, the change will fail.

5. Getting write access later

If you started read-only and later want Claude to be able to make changes, you'll need to re-authorize: remove the connector (or otherwise re-trigger the authorization flow) and add it again, ticking the checkbox on Planner's screen this time. There's no separate "upgrade" step — authorizing again with the box checked is how you grant write access.

6. Stopping Planner and revoking access

These are two different things:

  • In Claude, removing the Planner connector stops Claude from sending it any further requests. It does not withdraw the access YNAB granted, and it does not affect whatever tokens Claude is already holding.
  • In YNAB, go to Account Settings → Security → Authorized Applications and revoke Planner from there. This is the step that actually withdraws access — it invalidates the grant on YNAB's own side, so those tokens stop working regardless of what Claude does with them.

If you want to be sure access is really gone, revoke it in YNAB — that's the step that matters.

Because Planner doesn't keep a durable copy of your data (see the Privacy Policy), revoking access in YNAB is the whole story on Planner's side — there's nothing else to delete afterward.