all work
case 022026 · solo · full stacklive

Gerbil

A mobile-first money tracker: type an amount, sort it out later. Virtual funds inside real accounts, and holds that keep “safe to spend” honest.

role
solo · full stack
method
GitHub Spec Kit
stack
Next.js, MongoDB, TypeScript
01 / The idea

Gerbil tracks personal money with almost no friction. Capture first, organise later: an amount goes into an Inbox and gets sorted when there’s a minute. One bank account can hold several virtual funds, and upcoming payments put money on hold so the “available” figure is the real one.

02 / How it was built
  • Written with GitHub Spec Kit: ten prioritised user stories, each with an independent test and acceptance scenarios.
  • Open questions settled in a clarify pass before any code: Google sign-in only, holds on cash accounts only, a 250 MB receipt cap.
  • AI agents implemented it story by story, with the acceptance scenarios as the definition of done.
03 · the takeaway

Specified down to the edge cases: the 31st, offline duplicates, over-allocated funds.

The spec does the arguing up front, so the build stays boring, which is exactly what you want from software that does money maths.

04

Where AI fits next

v2 roadmap, not shipped

Receipt photos read into Inbox entries, natural-language capture (“lunch 850 from cash, dining fund”), and “ask your money”: chat over your own records with citations to transactions, strictly scoped to one user.

Vercel AI SDKstructured outputRAGtool calling