Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models run on your machine

Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by terwint on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @07:43PM (#50080515)

Very nice project. I think this is is in the step of the right direction for agent-driven assistance.

> How it works: you import a CSV from any bank, in any currency.

I think this is where you're going to lose people. If you're having to pull in data from multiple different sources, each with their own flow for exporting, I think this might be a non-starter for creating good financial habbit.

I recnetly had success integrating my local AI agent with Monarch money via an open source monarch MCP project. It took a bit of (AI) hacking the login stuff, but now I'm able to pull transactions, query patterns, have a daily report generated from hermes, etc. Much more technical that your target audience but possibly offers some inspiration.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by niztk on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @08:35PM (#50080932)

Appreciate the feedback. There's also a connected mode leveraging Plaid where transactions pass through servers memory and never stored. Outside the US, CSV is the only path for now otherwise agree CSV export is a chore for multi-bank users.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by lathiat on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @08:49PM (#50081027)

There’s similar support from many banks in many countries. But obviously will be a bunch of work to support them all.

It also requires you generally to trust some third party with your data.

Here’s an API one for Australia / New Zealand / USA: https://redbark.com/developers

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by niztk on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @08:57PM (#50081076)

Thanks, I was planning to add country integrations outside the US. Appreciate the pointer here.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by cortesoft on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @08:39PM (#50080951)

You could add support for something like simplefin.org, which provides an API for connecting to many different financial orgs. It is what I have been using for my local setup with Actual budget.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by elyobo on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @09:29PM (#50081284)

Actual budget is good. Connectivity in Australia sucks though so I've kludged my own approach (open banking connections to a single local aggregator then puppeteer to sign in and get an access token, then directly calling the aggregators internal APIs with it and pushing the data into a local Actual server using Actual's APIs).

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by unsnap_biceps on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @09:03PM (#50081110)

Does your financial orgs actually support simplefin or are you using simplefin bridge?

Bridge is actually provided by mx.com, pretty much the same service as Plaid.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by niztk on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @08:44PM (#50080987)

Thanks, will surely look into this.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by post-it on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @08:43PM (#50080975)

A lot of banks make it easier to export PDF statements. I wonder if you could try adding the ability to extract transactions from a PDF. I've been working on something more limited (extracting just the account balance) with Qwen3 4B with decent success.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by niztk on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @08:54PM (#50081057)

I've tried with some success but will spend more time on the input layer.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by calyhre on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @02:25AM (#50083192)

I had great success using enablebanking.com for personal usage. The setup is a bit cumbersome, but works really well

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by niztk on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @02:30AM (#50083247)

Thanks, will surely give this a try. So far, I have US today with Canada, UK, AU, NZ and Europe on the roadmap.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by i_am_a_squirrel on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @10:47PM (#50081774)

"if you're having to pull in data from multiple different sources, each with their own flow for exporting"

you say this, but i got ChatGpt to just open chrome logged into two credit cards and a bank app and download everything with a certain criteria (i did this to populate items in a travel split app). So maybe it's not that bad

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by xyst on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @11:00PM (#50081873)

You trust anything run through a black box model to remain private? Laughable.

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by i_am_a_squirrel on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @11:51PM (#50082179)

tapping my credit card to buy things and generate the financial data in the first place was already trusting a bunch of black boxes anyway right?

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Re:Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models... by nickthegreek on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @11:07PM (#50081902)

aren’t they all black box models?

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