Finance Import

Runs on: local-writes - creates or edits files in your OS folder; needs an agent with write access.

Convert a finance export into a markdown summary the OS can read later. The skill is read-only at the source boundary: it parses an export you give it and never writes back to your accounting tool or bank.

CSV input is supported. PDF input is a manual path until a per-format parser is tested (see PDF build path below).

Pre-flight

If core/identity.md does not exist, stop with: Founder OS not set up here. Run /founder-os:setup first.

When to invoke

Invoke when you have a finance CSV export and want a clean markdown mirror in the OS for later retrieval, planning, or to feed into unit-economics.

Protocol

1. Accept a CSV path and a reporting period (YYYY-MM).
2. Parse the header row and all records.
3. Detect likely amount, date, account, category, and memo columns.
4. Produce a normalized markdown summary with totals by category and warnings for missing fields.
5. Write the summary to finance/<period>/summary.md under the OS root (create the folders if they do not exist). Confirm the path with the operator before writing.
6. Print a one-line WROTE: confirmation with the path, byte count, and a short description.
7. Append a one-line trace to brain/log.md recording the period and record count.

Output schema

finance_import:
  status: ok | blocked
  input_type: csv | pdf
  source_path: "<path to the export>"
  period: "<YYYY-MM>"
  records_read: <number>
  records_skipped: <number>
  totals:
    - category: "<category>"
      amount: "<decimal string>"
  warnings:
    - "<warning or none>"
  output_path: "<path to summary.md>"

Failure modes

• Source type is PDF: return blocked_pdf_scaffold and ask for a CSV export instead.
• Amount column missing: stop and ask the operator to map columns.
• Date column missing: proceed only if the operator supplies the period.
• Confidential identifiers found (full account numbers, tax IDs): stop and ask the operator to redact before import. Do not echo them.
• Output path missing or unconfirmed: ask for the path before writing. Never overwrite an existing summary.md without confirmation.

Composes with

• unit-economics, which can read the category totals to ground a margin or break-even calculation in real numbers.
• strategic-analysis, which can cite the mirror when an analysis needs financial context.
• data-security, which classifies whether a given export is safe to keep in the OS as-is or needs redaction first.

This skill is standalone - it does not depend on any other finance skill. It produces the markdown mirror and stops.

Free-tier path

Free-tier users paste a small CSV sample into chat and copy the markdown summary into finance/<period>/summary.md manually. Large files should be summarized locally before pasting so the raw rows never enter context.

Worked example

Input CSV:

date,account,category,memo,amount
2026-04-01,Operating,Revenue,Example invoice,1200.00
2026-04-02,Operating,Software,Tool subscription,-50.00
2026-04-03,Operating,Revenue,Second invoice,800.00

Output:

finance_import:
  status: ok
  input_type: csv
  source_path: "exports/finance-2026-04.csv"
  period: "2026-04"
  records_read: 3
  records_skipped: 0
  totals:
    - category: Revenue
      amount: "2000.00"
    - category: Software
      amount: "-50.00"
  warnings: []
  output_path: "finance/2026-04/summary.md"

Expected file header:

# Finance Summary - 2026-04

Source: `exports/finance-2026-04.csv`
Records read: 3
Records skipped: 0

Output line:

WROTE: finance/2026-04/summary.md | 612 bytes | normalized finance summary for 2026-04

PDF build path

PDF parsing is not enabled by default because table extraction from a PDF is fragile and a wrong total is worse than no total. To enable it for your export format:

1. Collect three sample PDFs of the same export type with confidential fields redacted.
2. Define the page and table patterns for that export type.
3. Add a visual review step before trusting any extracted total.
4. Compare PDF extraction totals against a CSV export for the same period.
5. Promote PDF input only after the totals match across repeated tests.

Cross-reference

• skills/unit-economics/SKILL.md - reads the category totals for business math.
• skills/data-security/SKILL.md - classifies whether the export is safe to keep as-is.