Recap

What Is Recap?

The "Recap" skill for Claude Code is a specialized, narrative-driven financial review tool designed for personal or business cash flow analysis. Triggered by natural language requests like "monthly recap," "spending summary," or "year in review," Recap intelligently interprets the requested time period, queries financial data, and generates a human-readable summary with key metrics and comparisons. It is part of the broader cashflow plugin suite and is designed to drive actionable insights from transaction data, making it suitable for developers and users looking to automate financial reviews.

Why Use Recap?

Traditional financial reporting tools often require manual setup or rigid reporting intervals. Recap differentiates itself by automating the selection of relevant periods, fetching comparative data, and presenting results in narrative form. This reduces the cognitive burden on users, helps identify trends and anomalies efficiently, and supports better decision-making. Whether you’re tracking your personal expenses, managing business cash flows, or building applications that require financial summaries, Recap offers an accessible, API-driven approach to financial reviews.

Key benefits include:

• Time-Saving Automation: Eliminates the need for manual report generation.
• Contextual Comparisons: Automatically includes prior period and year-over-year comparisons to highlight trends and seasonality.
• Narrative Output: Presents financial data in a way that’s easier to understand and share.
• Extensible Workflow: Integrates with other cashflow management skills and tools for custom workflows.

How to Get Started

Integrating the Recap skill into your workflow requires minimal setup. Here’s a basic outline to get you started:

1. Install the cashflow plugin suite.
   Clone the repository and follow any setup instructions provided for dependency installation and environment configuration.

2. Invoke Recap via Natural Language or API.
   The skill is triggered by phrases such as “monthly recap,” “how did I do this month,” or “year in review.” You can also call it programmatically by passing arguments indicative of the desired time period.

3. Sample API Invocation:
   If integrating Recap into a codebase, you can trigger the workflow by passing the relevant arguments. For example, to generate a recap for January 2025:

   json

   {
     "skill": "recap",
     "arguments": "january 2025"
   }

4. Integration with MCP Tool:
   Recap uses a query function (referred to as the MCP tool) to fetch the necessary financial data. Make sure your environment is configured to allow these internal calls.

Key Features

Recap’s workflow is designed for flexibility and thoroughness. Here’s a breakdown of its core functionalities:

1. Dynamic Period

Detection

Recap parses natural language arguments to determine the reporting period. Supported formats include named periods (“this week,” “last month”), explicit months and years (“January 2025,” “2025-01”), quarters (“Q1 2025”), and custom date ranges.

Example Parsing Logic:

def parse_period(argument):
    # Example logic (pseudo-code)
    if argument in ["this week", "last week"]:
        return "weekly"
    elif argument in ["this month", "january", "2025-01"]:
        return "monthly"
    # Extend for quarterly, yearly, etc.

2. Comparative Data

Fetching

Recap retrieves summary data for the detected period along with prior period and year-ago period comparisons. This helps surface trends and anomalies due to seasonality or behavioral changes.

Sample Query for Summary Data:

{
  "period": "2025-01",
  "compare": "prior_period",
  "include": ["ratios", "anomalies", "accounts"]
}

Sample Query for Year-Ago Comparison:

{
  "start": "2024-01-01",
  "end": "2024-01-31",
  "include": ["ratios"]
}

3. Recurring Bills

Detection

To provide context on fixed costs, Recap fetches data on recurring bills:

{
  "recurring": true
}

4. Narrative

Synthesis

Recap synthesizes all data into a readable narrative. The summary includes headline numbers (total income, expenses, net cash flow, savings rate), period-over-period performance, year-over-year trends, and notable anomalies or changes in recurring expenses.

Best Practices

To maximize the utility of the Recap skill:

• Be Specific with Time Frames: While Recap defaults to monthly reviews, specifying exact periods or date ranges yields more targeted insights.
• Integrate with Regular Workflows: Schedule automated Recap runs (e.g., at the end of each month or quarter) to maintain consistent financial oversight.
• Leverage Comparative Data: Use the prior period and year-over-year comparisons to contextualize performance and inform future actions.
• Combine with Other Skills: Integrate Recap with budgeting, forecasting, or alerting modules for a comprehensive financial management solution.

Important Notes

• Date Parsing: Ensure your input arguments are unambiguous to avoid incorrect period detection.
• Data Quality: Recap’s insights are only as reliable as the underlying transaction data. Regularly reconcile and categorize your financial data for the best results.
• Customization: While Recap covers common review intervals, developers can extend or modify the skill to support custom periods or additional metrics as required.
• Security: When handling sensitive financial data, follow best practices for authentication, authorization, and encryption.

The Recap skill streamlines financial narrative generation, making it a valuable addition to any cashflow automation or dashboarding project. For further customization and advanced usage, consult the source code and documentation provided in the official repository.