January 3, 2026
Regex vs Robots: Budget Battle
Tally – A tool to help agents classify your bank transactions
Tally wants AI to sort your spending — commenters cry “just use regex”
TLDR: Tally is an open-source tool that uses AI to categorize your bank transactions on your own computer. Commenters are split between “this should be simple regex” skeptics and “it’s a tricky real-world problem” defenders, with extra shade for the site’s AI vibe and calls for friendlier, plug‑and‑play integrations.
Tally drops in promising to auto-categorize your bank statements using your favorite AI sidekick, all locally and open source. It reads cryptic lines like “WHOLEFDS MKT” and “SQ *JOES COFFEE,” then writes simple rules so your coffee isn’t lumped in with fast food. Sounds neat… but the comments turned it into Regex vs Robots. The loudest voice? A purist calling it the “peak of resume-driven development,” arguing this is a 50‑line script problem turned into a token‑burning spectacle. Old‑school budgeters flexed their regex muscles while clutching their spreadsheets.
Another camp fired back: this is harder than it looks. One user said friends built a whole company around parsing messy bank data across multiple banks and edge cases—so kudos to shipping something usable. Meanwhile, the peanut gallery roasted the site vibe: “LLM website feels LLM,” with “bootstrap skin just dropped” energy. UX folks piled on too, wanting a turnkey plug‑and‑play experience, not CSVs and command lines. Someone even asked if there was a 90s accounting app named Tally, adding a dash of nostalgia chaos. Love it or roast it, Tally’s open source and local‑only pitch is winning interest—while the comment section keeps the drama brewing like a double‑shot espresso.
Key Points
- •Tally integrates with AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Codex) to categorize bank transactions.
- •Users define plain-English rules, which Tally writes to a local file; no database or cloud is used.
- •The workflow includes exporting CSVs, running “tally init,” AI-assisted rule creation, and “tally run” to produce reports.
- •Examples show granular categorization (e.g., Zelle babysitting to Childcare; Costco with gas as fuel).
- •Tally is open source under the MIT License, with installation via curl (Linux/macOS) or PowerShell.