Ray

Ray: The Private, Open-Source AI Financial Advisor for Your Local Machine

In an era where financial data is often scattered across various apps and cloud services, Ray emerges as a powerful, privacy-first solution. Ray is an AI financial advisor that connects to your bank, understands your full financial picture, and provides real, actionable advice—all while running locally on your machine. By combining the intelligence of AI with the security of local processing, Ray offers a level of financial guidance that traditional budgeting apps simply cannot match.

What's Ray?

Ray is not just another dashboard or a simple chatbot; it is a comprehensive AI financial advisor designed for those who want professional-grade insights without the $200/hour fee. Available via a simple npm command, Ray integrates with your terminal to provide a persistent, intelligent profile of your financial life.

What truly sets Ray apart is its memory. Ray maintains a persistent profile of your income, goals, family situation, and key decisions. Whether you are a parent, a freelancer, or a new graduate, Ray knows what happened on day 1 through day 29 to give you better advice on day 30. It is an open-source, MIT-licensed tool that ensures full transparency and data ownership.

Key Features of Ray

Ray is packed with over 30 tools that query your real financial data to help you manage your money effectively.

Persistent Life Profiling

Ray remembers everything you tell it. It tracks your family situation (e.g., married with two kids), career stages (e.g., a new job at $95k), and specific financial goals like paying off student loans. When your life changes, Ray updates your profile automatically.

Real-Time Bank Integration

Through Plaid, Ray connects to over 12,000 financial institutions, including major banks, brokerages, and lenders. This allows the AI financial advisor to pull balances across checking, savings, credit cards, and loans to give you an accurate, real-time net worth.

Financial Behavioral Scoring

Ray turns financial discipline into a game. It provides a daily 0-100 behavior score with streaks and unlockable achievements like "Kitchen Hero" for avoiding restaurants or "Monk Mode" for zero-spend days.

Deep Transaction Auditing

Ray can perform complex tasks that standard apps can't. You can ask Ray to audit tenant payments for the past year or scan for unusual charges and duplicate payments. It acts as a financial watchdog that actually checks the fine print.

Local-First Privacy

Privacy is the core of the Ray experience. Your data is never stored in the cloud. It lives in an encrypted database on your hard drive (~/.ray). Before any data reaches the AI (Anthropic), your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is scrubbed.

How to Use Ray

Setting up your personal AI financial advisor is straightforward and takes less than five minutes.

1. Install Ray: Open your terminal and run the command: npm install -g ray-finance
2. Connect Your Bank: Securely link your financial accounts through Plaid by running: ray link
3. Ask Anything: Start a conversation with your data. Use natural language to ask questions like "Am I on track to save $10k?" or "Can I afford this trip?"

Use Cases for Ray

Ray adapts to your specific needs, providing contextual advice that generic AI models like ChatGPT cannot offer because they lack access to your real numbers.

• Debt Management: Instead of generic advice to "save 20%," Ray can analyze your $34,200 debt across specific cards and suggest pausing a vacation fund to target a 24.9% APR card first.
• Big Purchase Planning: If you want to take a trip to Tahoe, Ray will calculate the impact on your 401k contributions and suggest how to catch up later in the year.
• Housing Decisions: Ray can evaluate if your rent is too high based on your $6,100 take-home pay and remind you of your future plans to move in with a partner to lower costs.
• Anomalies and Security: Use Ray to find unexpected hits to your account or ensure your subscriptions haven't increased in price without you noticing.

FAQ

What does Ray do? Ray is an AI-powered financial brain that connects to your bank accounts to provide personalized advice, track your net worth, audit transactions, and help you reach your savings goals.

How does Ray keep my financial data private? Everything stays in the ~/.ray folder on your machine. Your data is encrypted at rest using bank-level standards. When communicating with the AI, Ray masks your identity, and no data is stored on external servers.

How is Ray different from Monarch, Copilot, or YNAB? Traditional apps are dashboards that show you what happened in the past. Ray is an advisor that tells you what to do next. While spreadsheets require you to do the work, Ray analyzes the data for you and remembers your history.

How much does Ray cost? There are two ways to use Ray:

• Full Control (Free): Bring your own Anthropic and Plaid keys. It is MIT-licensed and free forever.
• Ray Pro ($10/month): A managed version where AI and bank connections are included for easy setup.

Which banks does Ray work with? Ray supports over 12,000 institutions via Plaid, including major national banks and local credit unions.

Disclaimer: Ray is an AI tool, not a licensed financial advisor. Output is informational and does not constitute financial advice. Consult a professional before making major financial decisions.