vitalikpie

Just a small fun guide on how to build a basic coding agent in ~300 lines of Python.

From an api call to the genetic loop, tools and skills. The idea came from https://app.codecrafters.io/courses/claude-code/overview - highly recommend it.

Yeah this is exactly what I do under the hood. All the data is stored as Ints, charts use double for speed, views use decimal to display stuff properly in the user locale.

P.S. Doubles are absolute evil for calculations:

    @Test
    func test() {
        var a = Decimal(100.4449315513924) * 100 // It's me being dumb, not noticing that
        let b = NSDecimalNumber(decimal: a).intValue
        #expect(b == 10044) // Expectation failed: (b → -8402) == 1044
    }

Thanks. After all I'm a human too. I'm prone to AI psychosis.

Thanks :)

I was contemplating between hledger and GnuCash for a while and then choose GnuCash because it has pretty good UX for transactions entry.

The missing piece for me was a mobile app. So trying closing this gap with HandsOnMoney.

But I'll be honest - I'm putting off the statement import as much as I can until my financial anxiety kicks in.

In hindsight do you think it was an right decision or too "pure"?

Thanks for idea. I think I'll do another more techy article on this.

Agree on this. Current situation is kinda broken:

- people do not trust Plaid and Finicity - data is captive inside of bank portals - each damn CSV has it's own format

God damn it! I did not bother to check the treasury. Thank you for catching mistake - I will correct it.

I knew there will be something to hunt minor units.

Yeah. Likely so. While at the same time, they may have some other reason - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9S6qD_Wylw

Did not know that. Will update the article. Thank you!

I'm using a free version, so if an LLM suggestions slipped in - it only a couple of them.

Thanks for the info! But did you guys thought about fractional commodities those days? Or was it clear that it is going away?

I think it's because thought-process is done in Russian, translated into English and the checked for grammar mistakes with Grammarly.

Thanks! I believe blogs and indie products should have personality - otherwise it so easy to overlook them.

Thanks!

Do you do budget in GnuCash or somewhere else?

Yeah, I'm just a developer mostly chatting with LLMs. I hope I'll develop a distinct style some day.

Yeah, I thought about it when I first saw the coin cut into pieces - https://www.pirateglossary.com/glossary/pieces-of-eight

But then why didn't they cut it into 10 pieces - https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/40600/40610/pie_01-10a_40610.htm ?

hm, I don't have any other ways to prove it. The thing is - I thought this is something LLM can't write about.

Just imagine a prompt: "Hey Claude, go ahead and come up with idea why GnuCash stores numbers as fractions and come up with an article for HN". I actually tried it and god damn thing came up with something very similar :D

Yeah, sorry. It's kind of intentional. Did not want to give it a boring name like "Storing fractions vs decimals".

yep, I'm Ukrainian

haha, true.

Thing is - I'm not a English speaker. But I chat a lot with Claude/ChatGPT - i feel like I'm picking the style from them unintentionally.

Agree. I wish banks have their APIs open. It's 2026 and we have OIDC.

But I used to actually pull the CSV once a week and feed it to GnuCash. It's pretty good at auto-categorization.

Also I simplified my finances to only a couple of checking accounts and only one credit account (for car rentals).

Lived through something like this after USSR collapsed and before Hryvnya was introduced. Boy I remember the bread cost - 10,000,000 :D

Curious what made you think it's AI slop?

Yeah this one is my attempt to write without LLMs rewriting my thoughts. P.S. Came to the decision after going through https://thebullshitmachines.com/

huh, sorry I'm really bad at writing - this is one of my first attempts

It is :) No AI slop. I'm intentionally trying to write without LLM (my previous blog posts clearly disclose it).

Well I'm seriously jealous about these posts. I rewrote this and that. One 10x engineer + Claude did everything in an hour.

It feels like I'm getting gaslighted.

I use AI at work with C#/Python - it fine. It can write some glue code and sometimes even pretty well. But I have to hand-hold it a lot.

My own project in Swift. Boy, AI can't handle Apple quirks - multiple iterations, code does not compile or missing crucial pieces (there are navigation links but not navigation stack).

I'm trying to be not picky. I want AI to do my job. But it's so far away.

Am I alone and everyone rewriting Linux in Rust over a weekend?