User guide

The web app is where you see your household's money: every figure is computed by code on your own machine, and every page explains where it comes from.

This guide walks through the app page by page, on the synthetic demo household (the Rossi family: Anna, Luca, Mia and Noa). Every name, bank, merchant and amount you see is invented.

Signing in

The app never signs you in from a plain page load. You open it with a one-time login link that coach ui prints in its own terminal.

uvDocker

uv run coach ui                 # starts the app and opens your browser on the login link
uv run coach ui --login-link    # prints a fresh link (the server may already be running)

docker compose exec coach coach ui --login-link

How the link works, and why:

What	Why
The token sits in the URL fragment (/login#t=...)	A browser never sends a fragment to a server, a log or a Referer header.
It works once, for 2 minutes	A link left in a terminal scrollback is useless a minute later.
The page trades it for a session cookie and removes it from the address bar	The cookie is HttpOnly, SameSite=Strict, signed, and lasts [ui] session_hours (12 by default).
Sign out revokes the session on the server	A copied cookie stops working too.

Lost the link, or it already worked once? The login page tells you how to print a fresh one. coach ui --rotate-session-key signs every browser out at once.

One login per person

Each adult or child can have their own login, created in a terminal with coach users. coach ui --login-link --user ID prints the one-time link of that login. A child login sees only "My money": their own balance, spending, limits and pocket money, and no other page. See Household & kids.

The layout

The sidebar on the left, the top bar above every page.

Sidebar

The first entries are the ones you open every day: Dashboard, Transactions, Insights, Alerts and Ask the coach. Then three sections:

Section	Pages
Plan	Categories, Review, Budgets, Subscriptions, Loans & net worth, Rental property, Calendar
People	Household, Kids' money, Who pays what
System	Set up, Memory, Connections, Gold set, AI usage

Badges count what waits for you (insights, alerts, merchants to review, memory items), and a dot next to Connections flags a bank consent that needs attention. The footer reminds you: "Local only. Your data never leaves this machine."

Top bar

Control	What it does
Household	The person switch. Narrow every figure to one person (what is attributed to them) or to the accounts used for one purpose. Pages about the whole household (net worth, connections, memory) ignore it.
Connection warning	Appears when a bank consent is close to expiry or a sync failed ("Connection needs action" when it is urgent).
Sync now	Pulls new transactions. The daily limit per account applies.
Language	English, French or Italian. It also sets the format of dates, numbers and money.
Theme	Cycles between system, light and dark.
Sign out	Ends this browser session (revoked on the server).

On a phone

The layout is mobile-first. On a narrow screen the sidebar becomes a bottom tab bar (Dashboard, Transactions, Insights, Coach, and More for every other page), and dialogs open as bottom sheets. The app is a PWA: you can add it to your home screen, and an offline shell shows the app frame when the server is not reachable (the data always need the local server).

To reach the app from your phone, see Connections and the web app reference: remote access goes through an HTTPS proxy such as Tailscale, never the open internet.

Comfort and accessibility

• Dark and light follow your system, with the toggle in the top bar to force one.
• Keyboard: every control is reachable with Tab, focus is always visible, a "Skip to content" link comes first, and dialogs trap the focus and close with Esc.
• A Table alternative for every chart: each chart has a Table switch that shows the same numbers as a table, for screen readers and for anyone who wants the exact figures.

Privacy by construction

• No CDN, no external font, no analytics, no telemetry: everything is bundled, and the Content Security Policy forbids anything else.
• The app listens on 127.0.0.1 only, unless you explicitly allow a remote host behind an HTTPS proxy.
• The frontend holds no business logic: it formats what the analytics computed.
• Memory changes that the coach suggests are proposals. The page shows them; you accept them yourself in a terminal.

The pages

• Dashboard

  Balances, this month against a usual month, cash flow, the 90-day forecast, and what needs you.

• Transactions

  Every operation, filtered and totalled, with why each one has its category and how to change it.

• Categories & review

  A usual month per category, drill-downs, and the queue of labels the app is unsure about.

• Budgets & goals

  Monthly envelopes with a projected month end, suggestions, and savings goals.

• Subscriptions & contracts

  Every recurring cost, contract status, cancellation rules, cheaper offers and the savings you achieved.

• Loans & net worth

  What you own and owe, from real amortization schedules. Unknowns are listed, never guessed.

• Rental property

  Cash flow and P&L, the scheme commitment, tax-year candidates and neutral indicators.

• Calendar

  Recurring payments, instalments, renewals and consents on a month grid, with an .ics download.

• Insights & alerts

  Anomalies, price changes, reminders, and the alert events with their channels.

• Ask the coach

  Ask questions in plain words. The answer cites the evidence it rests on.

• Memory & set-up

  Open questions, proposals, loans, contracts, assets, and the first-run checklist.

• Household & kids

  Members, account owners, attribution rules, kids' money and who pays what.

• Connections

  Bank consents, sync, accounts and internal transfers.

• Quality & AI usage

  The gold set that measures the categories, and what the AI calls cost.

See also

• Web app reference: every page, the security model and the API.
• Languages: how the interface is translated.
• Security and Privacy.