What MCP is
MCP is an open standard for giving AI agents structured access to external data sources and tools. Instead of asking Claude to reason over a paste of bank statements, you give it a live connection to Breadbox. The agent calls tools to query your data, reads context resources to understand your household setup, and responds based on real, up-to-date information.Two transports
Breadbox supports two ways to connect an MCP client. Streamable HTTP is the primary transport. The MCP endpoint lives at/mcp on your Breadbox server — the same process that serves the REST API and admin dashboard. This transport works for any deployment: Docker, remote server, or a local binary running as a server. HTTP connections require an API key passed in the X-API-Key header.
Stdio is a convenience mode for local setups. Running breadbox mcp-stdio starts an MCP session over stdin/stdout. Because the process connects directly to your database, no API key is required. This mode is ideal when Claude Desktop is running on the same machine as Breadbox.
What the MCP server exposes
The server advertises two capability types: tools and resources. Tools are callable functions the agent uses to query and change your data — listing accounts, searching transactions, counting results, categorizing, tagging, creating rules, triggering syncs, and submitting reports. Around 40 tools in total; see the MCP Reference tab for the complete enumeration, or MCP tools for a human walkthrough of the ones you’re most likely to grant access to. Resources are passive context documents the agent can read to orient itself before taking action.| Resource URI | What it contains |
|---|---|
breadbox://overview | Live dataset summary organized as scope (counts, date range), freshness (last sync, ingest signals, errored connections), and backlog (needs-review and unmapped counts), plus the household roster |
breadbox://accounts | Bank accounts (checking, savings, credit cards, loans, investments) with balances, institution names, and currency |
breadbox://categories | Two-level category taxonomy keyed by slug; the source of valid category_slug values |
breadbox://tags | Current tag vocabulary keyed by slug; the needs-review tag is the review-queue handle |
breadbox://users | Household members with their roles (admin, editor, viewer) |
breadbox://sync-status | Per-connection sync status and last-sync timestamps |
breadbox://review-guidelines | Guidelines for reviewing transactions and creating categorization rules; editable from the MCP Settings page |
breadbox://report-format | Templates and formatting rules for agent-submitted reports; editable from the MCP Settings page |
breadbox://rule-dsl | Reference grammar for transaction rules: condition fields, action types, priority bands, and provider quirks |
breadbox://overview resource gives the agent ambient context about your household’s financial state without requiring a round-trip tool call. An agent that reads it first knows how big the dataset is, whether it’s currently in sync, and what’s open in the review backlog — before it asks a single question.
What agents can do
With an MCP connection to Breadbox, an agent can:- Summarize monthly spending by category across all accounts or per family member
- Flag transactions that look unusual given your typical patterns
- Identify uncategorized transactions and suggest categories based on your existing data and the agent’s own context (inbox, calendar, household history)
- Write and maintain categorization rules so patterns it figures out once get applied automatically on every future sync
- Answer questions like “how much did we spend on groceries last quarter?”
- Trigger a manual sync to pull the latest transactions before running an analysis
- Submit a formatted spending report for your records
MCP access can be scoped to read-only or read-write depending on your API key configuration. A read-only key prevents the agent from triggering syncs or submitting reports. See API keys for details.
API key requirement
HTTP transport requires a valid API key in every request. Generate one from the API Keys section of the admin dashboard and pass it as theX-API-Key header in your MCP client config. Stdio mode does not require an API key because the process has direct database access.
Next steps
Set up MCP
Connect Claude (Desktop, web, mobile), Claude Code, ChatGPT, Openclaw, Manus, or any other MCP-compatible agent to Breadbox.
MCP reference
Complete reference for every MCP tool Breadbox exposes — parameters, example inputs, example outputs, and scope labels.