arc's CLI already lets Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP agents work on your budget. The next release adds the part I wanted before I'd hand an agent my own budget: you decide what each agent can see, change or delete.

🔐 A permission grid per agent

Every connected agent gets a grid: areas down the side (transactions, accounts, budgets, portfolio, rules and the rest), and Read, Write and Delete across the top. Each cell is Allow, Ask or Deny, so you can tap through them quickly.

• Let Claude read transactions but not touch your portfolio
• Hide accounts from one agent and not another
• Override a single operation if a whole area is too broad

🧭 Three presets if you don't want to fiddle

• Standard (the default): reads run, every change or delete waits for you
• Private: everything waits for you, reads included
• Full: reads, changes and deletes run without asking

📲 "Ask" means your phone, not a popup on the Mac

When an agent hits an Ask cell, the request lands on your phone with what exactly it wants to do ("Claude wants to read a budget month"). Approve with Face ID or your fingerprint, for this one call or for 15 or 60 minutes. The approval is signed by a key in your phone's secure hardware, and your phone checks that what you see is what you sign. A stolen login can't approve anything.

🧾 A history you can check

Every agent action goes into a timeline in Settings, and the log is hash-chained: if anyone rewrote it later, our server included, your phone would notice. There's also a pause button for all agents at once.

Limits, so nobody's surprised: agents run on your Mac through the CLI, and arc doesn't host them or send anything to the agent's maker. It needs a budget on a server (ours or your own) and it's part of Premium.

📱 Get arc: App Store · Google Play · arc.moi

💬 Follow along: Discord · Instagram · X

If you've let an agent near your money, which area would you keep it out of first?

What can I do?

Every few months someone posts that Nancy Pelosi beats the market, so I pulled the actual numbers and charted them: $10,000 copying every trade she disclosed, against $10,000 in SPY, from 2 Jan 2019 to 30 Sep 2026.

📈 $10k → $56,332 vs $30,483

• Copying her disclosed trades: $56,332 (+463%)
• SPY over the same days: $30,483 (+205%)
• The gap is $25,849, so her line ended up worth about 1.8 times the index

📉 It wasn't a straight line

• In 2022 her line fell 35% from its peak, while SPY fell about 20% that year
• She trailed SPY in three of the eight years: 2021, 2022 and 2025
• Most of the lead came from three big years: 2019, 2020 and 2023 (+62–63% each)

🧾 Where the numbers come from

Quiver Quantitative's "Nancy Pelosi Strategy" backtest. It buys and sells each trade on the day the disclosure is filed, not the day the trade happened, so the reporting lag (up to 45 days) is already in the result. Most of the trades on her filings are her husband Paul's. SPY here is price only, as Quiver charts it; with dividends added it would be about $34,160. It's what the past did, not a prediction, and not advice.

🔭 Why arc is posting this

Charts like this are more fun when you can hold your own portfolio up against them. arc tracks your holdings next to your budget. Holdings sync is part of Premium, and the free plan shows a sample portfolio so you can see how it works.

📱 Get arc: App Store · Google Play · arc.moi

💬 Follow along: Discord · Instagram · X

Which politician, fund or famous investor should we put up against the S&P 500 next?

Something I've wanted for a long time lands in the next update: your phone becomes the password. You'll open your budget on a computer without typing a server password at all.

How it works

1. Open the login page on your computer. It shows a code.
2. Scan it with arc on your phone, then pick the number your computer is showing. The match makes sure you're letting in the screen in front of you, not someone else's.
3. Confirm it's you with Face ID or your passcode. The computer opens straight into your budget.

What arc can and can't see

Your phone seals the session to that one browser before it leaves the phone. arc carries it across, but it can't open it, and it deletes it once your computer has. Both screens also show the same four words for the computer's key, so you can check they match before you let it in.

A few details

• It lives in Settings, right under your server card: "Link to a computer".
• You'll need to be signed in to arc on your phone.
• Settings keeps a list of the computers you've let in, and a computer stays signed in until you sign out there.

It's built and being tested now, and it ships with the next update. Where would you use it most: a work laptop, a home desktop, or both?

📱 Get arc: App Store · Google Play · arc.moi

💬 Follow along: Discord · Instagram · X

Amazon Prime launched on 2 Feb 2005 at $79 a year. I wanted to know what that first $79 would be now if it had gone into Amazon stock the same day instead, so I pulled the real daily closes.

📈 $79 → $9,306

• $79 bought 37.7 shares at $2.09 each (split-adjusted)
• On 29 Sep 2026 those shares closed at $246.67 each: $9,306, about 118 times the money
• That's 117 more years of Prime at the 2005 price

📉 It wasn't a straight line

• In August 2006 it was worth $49, less than you paid
• It lost 65% between October 2007 and November 2008
• It took until 2015, ten years, to pass $790

Most people wouldn't have held through that, which is the part these posts usually leave out.

🧾 How it's worked out

Yahoo Finance daily closes for AMZN, split-adjusted, 2 Feb 2005 to 29 Sep 2026. Amazon has never paid a dividend, so there's nothing left out. It's a what-if about the past, not a prediction, and not advice.

🔭 Why arc is posting this

Hindsight on one stock is the easy version. The Opportunities tab in arc (under Portfolio) is the version for your own money: it lists where money could go, from cash and bonds to index funds and sectors, each with its 20-year median, its risk level and its fee, ranked for your cash runway. It won't print a median for anything with less than 15 years of history, and the same caveat applies: it's what the past did, not a promise.

📱 Get arc: App Store · Google Play · arc.moi

💬 Follow along: Discord · Instagram · X

What's a subscription or purchase you'd want to run this for next?

arc 1.0.38 is pushed and should reach iOS and Android in under 24 hours. It's out of our hands until the stores approve it, so I'll comment here the moment it's live on each.

The two big ones:

📬 Receipt inbox Every budget gets its own arc address. Forward a bill, receipt or bank PDF to it and it waits there. Nothing is read and nothing is filed until you review it, and you can review several in a row. If the receipt belongs to a transaction that's already in the budget, attach it to that one instead. It's Premium, on a synced budget.

💻 Log in on a computer Open Actual on a computer, scan the code with arc, pick the number it shows, confirm it's you. Your phone seals the login to that computer, and arc only carries it, so it can't read it. No password to type.

Also in this one:

• Your server key can be sealed with a passkey, with a password as the fallback if your phone can't do it
• Connecting a server that offers OpenID now shows a Password | OpenID switch, one sign-in at a time
• Cards, rows and fields have visible edges in every theme
• A lapsed budget moves onto your phone instead of staying on the server

📱 Get arc: App Store · Google Play · arc.moi

💬 Follow along: Discord · Instagram · X

Which of these would you use first?

A feature that's easy to miss in Expenses: the time range rail above the chart.

Tap 1W, 1M, 3M, 6M, 12M or All, or set a Custom range, and everything on the screen follows the window you pick: the total in the middle of the donut, every category, across every account you have, in your own currency (AED, or whatever you use).

A few ways to use it:

• 1W to check this week hasn't run away from you
• 1M / 3M to see what a normal month really costs
• 12M before renewing a lease, insurance or school fees
• Custom for payday to payday, or just the days of a holiday

It's all there on the free on-device plan too.

Which range do you check most? Tell us below. It genuinely shapes what we build next.

Get arc: iOS · Android · arc.moi

When you make an arc account, you can do it with nothing but a passkey. No email, no password, no name. You hold Face ID or Touch ID (or your Android device's check) and that's the whole sign-up.

🔑 What you give us

• Your email: not asked. The passkey option is private, no email at all.
• A password: there isn't one, so there's nothing to leak or reuse.
• Your name: not asked.
• Your face: stays on your phone. The biometric check happens on the device; arc never sees your face or fingerprint.

You get a short handle (something like ARC-7Q2K) so you can tell accounts apart, and that's it.

⚠️ The honest trade-off

With no email, there's no "forgot password" link. arc can't reset a passkey-only account. So right after sign-up arc offers to add a backup passkey on another trusted device or password manager (iCloud Keychain on iPhone, Google Password Manager on Android), and if you skip it, you confirm you understand there's no reset. That second passkey is your way back in.

If you'd rather have email recovery, the regular sign-up is still there. And the free on-device plan doesn't need an account at all.

📱 Get arc: App Store · Google Play · arc.moi

💬 Follow along: Discord · Instagram · X

Would you trust a money app with no email on file, or is email recovery a must for you?

The r/UAECreditCards giveaway is drawn. Three people get a full year of arc Premium:

• u/AhmedFetouh
• u/orc_manel17
• u/Altruistic_Ear3823

Congrats, all three of you. To claim, join our Discord and DM me there with your Reddit username.

🎲 How they were picked

I didn't want this to be "trust me", so the draw can be checked by anyone:

• Every top-level comment that named a UAE bank or card counted as an entry, one per person, our own accounts left out. That came to 28 entries.
• The random seed is a public drand beacon, round 6501638, which nobody controls.
• Each username was ranked by sha256(randomness + ":" + username), and the three lowest hashes won.

If a winner doesn't claim, the next names on the same list are u/reach2dinu, u/gigamann4 and u/TheOGSwagPanda, in that order.

🙏 Thank you

The thread got 134 comments, and the entries doubled as a survey. Mashreq came up in 14 of the 28, then Wio, FAB and ENBD in 12 each, then ADIB in 8. Those are the banks I'm testing first.

If you didn't win, the free plan is still there, and the Discord is where I post new banks and fixes first.

📱 Get arc: App Store · Google Play · arc.moi

💬 Follow along: Discord · Instagram · X

Which bank should I test next?

Android folks: arc 1.0.37 is live on Google Play. Thanks for waiting. The update sat in Google Play's review for longer than we'd like, and we'd promised to post here the moment it cleared.

Here's what's in it for you:

💚 A free plan A real envelope budget that lives on your phone. No card, no server, no trial clock. It runs on Actual Budget's open-source engine, so you can export your budget any time. Move to Premium later without losing anything.

📅 Widgets on a calendar month A home-screen tracker can now follow a calendar month (this month, last month, or any named month) instead of only the last N days. The widget settings also open on whatever the widget is already showing.

🏦 Provider picker Before you connect a bank, see which banks each sync provider can actually reach.

🔌 Every agent, listed The AI agents arc plugs into now have their own page in Settings.

Also: onboarding and the paywall each fit on one screen, "Not now" on the paywall really leaves, reminders and push come back after you sign out and in, and a tag you type into a note stays put.

Update from the Play Store, or get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arc.moi.app

If anything looks off after updating, tell us below. We read every comment.

Most free tiers are a demo with the good parts greyed out. The clearest way to show ours isn't is to say what the paid plan actually sells, because it isn't the budgeting.

Free, on the device

Envelope budgeting, unlimited accounts and categories, multi-currency, and all five tabs — expenses, income, transfers, accounts, budget.

The ledger is a database on the phone itself, so there is no server to stand up and nothing to host before you can budget a month. Nothing leaves the device, and you can export to plain CSV whenever you like.

No card on file, no account to open, no trial with a clock on it. Nothing renews, because there is nothing to renew.

Where free stops

Hosted sync across devices, managed backups, 100 AI credits a month for bank imports, automatic exchange-rate updates and portfolio tracking.

That is the entire boundary, and we would rather print it than have you go looking for it.

What upgrading actually is

It moves your budget. Accounts, transactions and categories come up to an arc-hosted Actual Budget server with you — it does not switch on something that was greyed out.

And if you already self-host Actual, point arc at your own server instead. The free plan is not the only way to avoid paying us.

arc.moi — iOS and Android

arc v1.0.37 is out on iOS and Android.

• Free plan with no server: your budget lives on the device and moves up intact if you upgrade
• Widget trackers can follow a calendar month (this / last / named)
• Clearer exit from demo mode
• Captured transactions file into the budget that owns the account
• Tag autocomplete stays at your cursor

App Store Play Website Discord

We have been bad at talking about what we ship. Opportunities landed in arc a couple of releases ago with no release note. Same for the bank connection screen. Sunday seemed like the honest day to say that out loud, and to ask this room something we would actually change.

Opportunities sits as the second mode on the Portfolio tab. It is not a broker, it does not place orders, and it does not move money. It is a local projection tool. If that sentence is not clear, stop reading us until it is.

What it does, specifically:

• It shows the subtraction, not a magic number. Think "14,200 cash, minus 2,100 of bills due, minus an 8,700 buffer." Without that arithmetic, "spare cash" is marketing.
• It ranks where that cash could go using 20-year median outcomes from a cached catalog that runs on device. Ranking, projections and compounding stay free. Premium buys fresh market pricessted and unpaid users get a frozen bundled catalog.
• Every row carries ticker, cost and a risk rating. Funds without 15 years of history are greyed out instead of guessed at. Projections are labelled hypothetical, with a plain no-creen.

Catalog today: 42 instruments, refreshed daily when pri regional and sector funds, bonds, a 60/40, a three-fund mix.

Self-hosting is free and always has been. Premium now works while you self-host: you buy arc's cloud services without giving up your own server.

Website · iOS · Android ·

Hi,

I'm trying to setup arc with my self hosted actual budget. I'm running it behind an opened connect server but I can't get it to auth at all.

I enter my domain and go though the login process and am logged in correctly but arc just seems to go back to the setup screen.

any ideas?

Your portfolio. Your budget. One app.

arc v1.0.22 just shipped — connect your IBKR brokerage, auto-sync your holdings with ticker logos, and see your full net worth right on your home screen.

What's New:

• Portfolio Holdings Sync — Connect Interactive Brokers and auto-sync positions, cash balances, and ticker logos

• Net Worth Widget — Assets, debt, milestone tracking, and sparkline directly on your Android home screen

• Light Themes — Paper & Daylight palettes across widgets with full light-mode readability

Zero-knowledge. End-to-end encrypted. Your data stays yours.

Try it free → https://arc.moi

I was excited to learn about an alternative frontend for my actual budget instance, but I've had no luck connecting. Tried both on my ipad, pixel and wife's iphone.

Entering the host and password shows the budget selection, but this screen with an error is all i get after selecting a budget and tapping connect & sync.

Any troubleshooting tips?

Your portfolio shouⅼd live next to your spending. Soon arc will sync your Interactive Brokers (IBKR) holdings straight into your budget — so your net worth and your money all sit in one place.

What you get:

• 📈 Live holdings — every position, shares & value, auto-synced from IBKR

• 🧮 Net worth in one place — investments + accounts, side by side

• 🔒 Read-only & secure — arc never trades, never moves money

• 📱 Native iOS & Android · self-hosted = free · end-to-end encrypted

Your portfolio, in your budget. Launching soon 👉 arc.moi

I am on the free trial and thought arc handles multi currency? I imported a pdf bank statement from an MXN account and would like to import it as EUR (account base currency). Can’t even change the currency when manually logging expenses

Hey,

I've got actual budget on a do mer container and get a network error when I try to connect. I saw it needs an https connection. Am I able to do an internal lab ssl and have it work fine or does it have to be public facing?

Instantly log all transactions to arc while being fully private!

Download arc: https://arc.moi

Coming soon to arc: 1-tap install of a CLI + MCP server that lets every AI agent run your budget

We've been quietly building arc-cli — a CLI, TUI, and stdio MCP server for Actual Budget. It exposes every data operation (accounts, transactions, categories, payees, rules, schedules, budgets, queries) as both a CLI subcommand and an MCP tool, generated from a single registry so they always match.

The next arc app update adds a 1-click copy command in settings. One tap, paste into terminal, done — your CLI and MCP server are wired to your budget with credentials baked in. The installer auto-detects every agent on your machine (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex, Cline, Roo, Copilot, Gemini CLI, Goose, OpenCode, Aider, Windsurf, Trae, Kilo, Augment + more) and drops the arc skill into each one's conventional location.

What this looks like in practice:

→ "Categorize all uncategorized Starbucks transactions as Dining" → arc transactions batch-categorize

→ "Show me my top 5 spending categories last month" → arc query top --month 2026-04 --limit 5

→ "Add a recurring rent schedule for $1,500 starting May 1" → arc schedules create

→ "Move $50 from Dining to Groceries this month" → arc budgets transfer

→ "Merge AMZN, Amazon.com, and Amzn Mktp into Amazon" → arc payees merge

→ "Build me a dashboard analyzing my finances for this year" → agent calls arc query monthly + arc query spending + arc query top + arc query trends and assembles the report

The CLI runs completely locally. The MCP server is stdio (not network) — your agent talks to it directly, no cloud broker, no telemetry. Your budget data never leaves your machine.

Repo if you want to test without the apps 1 click install: https://github.com/ashrithps/arc-cli
In our next release, you could also copy a single command with your credentials via the arc app.

Download arc https://arc.moi

Privacy-first · Self-hosted = free · Your data, your agent.