Your Google Sheet is now an MCP server.

What it is

MCP is an open standard for connecting assistants to data. Your copy of Tobsy, the script inside your spreadsheet, is the MCP server. Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants are clients: they connect with your link, read what they need, and answer you. The script lives in your Google account and the assistant talks to it directly, so the only parties are you, Google, which already holds your sheet, and the assistant you chose.

How to connect, in three steps

1. In Tobsy, open Settings → Assistant and copy your link.
2. Add it to your assistant as a custom MCP server, with no sign-in. In Claude the check may say 302 or Not found: press Continue anyway. The check stops at the way Google answers; the connection itself follows it.
3. Ask. "What did we spend on groceries in September?" The assistant already knows who is in the sheet, works out who you mean, and reads that month.

The link is a password: it holds the password that opens your spreadsheet, and anyone with it can read your figures the way an assistant does. Give it only to assistants you use. If it gets out, Unlink every other device under Settings → Assistant, from the device that set Tobsy up, makes a new one, and every assistant and device then needs the new link.

What it can read

An assistant reads through the same functions the app uses: your entries, categories, intentions, funds and goals, the calendar, your saved reports and the rest. Nothing the app itself would not show you. What you ask, and the figures needed to answer, go to the assistant you use, and its own terms apply to what it reads.

It gets the app's own numbers, not raw rows to add up: the six-month forecast range, your usual ranges and what is drifting, a goal's pace, the settle-up between you, the bills that have not come in yet. So "how are we doing this month?" gets the answer Home would give. It can also run any saved report, and check a bank statement against Tobsy to show what is missing.

What it can do: one step, chosen by you

Under Settings → Assistant, "What can assistants do here?" has four steps. The step is changed in the app only; an assistant cannot change it.

• Read. Assistants read your figures and answer. Nothing is written.
• Suggest. Where a sheet starts. Entries wait on the import board, where you change any row, leave rows out, or start over. Nothing lands in your ledger until you tap Import.
• Add entries. Entries go straight in, up to a hundred at a time. A row that looks like one already in Tobsy, or that needs a person's answer, comes back to the assistant as a question with choices, and it asks you.
• Make changes. Intentions, funds and goals, merchant rules, recurring, categories, plans, settle-ups and entries, once you say yes in the chat. Where the app offers two ways, such as moving a category for past entries too or from today, the assistant asks you which.

Every write answers once it has landed, with what changed: the month's figures before and after, a fund's new balance. Each change is listed in Change history with the assistant's name and the old and new values, the bell tells you, and most have Undo. A deleted entry is archived, so it can come back. People, households and settings stay suggestions: the assistant can propose a change there, and you make it in the app.

For an agent that works on its own

An agent you run yourself, one that reads your email or your receipts, can log entries in Tobsy through the same link. Paste the link into the agent's MCP settings; when it connects, the link tells it what to do and who is in this sheet: whose entry it is, how to send what it has read, and to leave the category to your own merchant rules unless the source names one. On Suggest, what it logs waits on the import board for your tap; on Add entries it goes straight in, and one tap undoes a batch. It needs nothing else from Tobsy: no API key and no extra set-up.

Private categories, person by person

An assistant sees each private category as one "Private" line a month: the total still counts, the details stay with you. Each person can let assistants see their own private categories under Settings → Assistant, with their PIN, entered in the app and not in a chat. Even then an assistant sees them only when the question is about that person. Turning it off needs no PIN.

The assistant inside Tobsy

For an assistant that cannot take the link, the Assistant tab answers with a model from a provider you choose, under your own API key: Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI or Groq. A Google API key is free to start, and Settings has a "Get a key" link for it. Claude inside Tobsy needs an Anthropic API key, paid as you go; a Claude plan does not come with one. The API key stays on your device, and Tobsy keeps no copy anywhere else.

What you ask, and the figures needed to answer, go to the provider you choose, under your own API key or plan. Depending on your provider, plan and settings, they may use it to improve their models. A local model on this computer keeps it here; it has to be set to accept calls from the app, as Ollama's OLLAMA_ORIGINS setting does.

Say an entry

On ＋Add, tap Voice and say it the way you would to a person: "forty-two at Woolworths, shared", "Sam paid the water bill yesterday, ninety dollars". Tobsy writes your words down on the phone itself, with no recording sent; the model under Settings → Assistant sorts them, and a free Google API key is enough.

When something is missing it asks, with buttons: whose income it is, whether it was shared, who paid, how much, which day. A category you name is kept; otherwise your merchant rules decide, as they do when you type. What you said lands on the review board, and you tap Import. Under Settings you can say who "I" means, so "I paid" goes in as you.