---
title: "Read-Only Finance AI: What Your Agent Can and Cannot Do | Candor"
description: "Read-only finance AI, explained: what your agent reads and saves in Candor, why it cannot move money, how each read is logged, and how to revoke or delete."
url: "https://candor.money/read-only-finance-ai"
updated: "2026-10-19"
---

# Read-only finance AI: what your agent can see in Candor, and what it can never do.

Updated 2026-10-19. Canonical page: https://candor.money/read-only-finance-ai

Candor is read-only toward your bank. Your agent, whether Claude, ChatGPT, Grok Bot, Meta Muse, or another, can read your balances, transactions, holdings, and debts, and can save the budgets, goals, notes, and decisions you approve. It cannot move money, pay a bill, trade, or cancel a service through Candor, because Candor has no tool that does. This page covers that boundary in detail: sign-in, access, logging, training, and how to leave.

## How it works with your agent

1. You connect accounts through secure, bank-grade sign-in. Your bank password never reaches Candor or your agent.
2. You approve your agent's access in the browser, and can disconnect it from the Connections page at any time.
3. Your agent reads records and saves the plan it works out with you. Every read and write is logged with its reason.
4. Anything that changes the outside world happens through your agent's own tools, with your approval.

## What does read-only mean in Candor?

Candor never changes anything at your bank. Your agent can read balances, transactions, holdings, debts, and recurring payments, and can save workspace records it works out with you: budgets, goals, notes, decisions, and corrections. It cannot move money, pay a bill, trade, open or close an account, or cancel a subscription through Candor.

Read-only describes the direction that matters: nothing flows from Candor to your institutions. Inside the workspace your agent does real work. It keeps the budget you agreed on, fixes a mislabeled merchant, records why you kept a charge, and notes a refund to check next month. Those records are what let the next conversation, or a different agent, start where the last one ended.

The read-only line:

| Your agent can, in Candor | No one can, through Candor |
| --- | --- |
| Read balances, transactions, holdings, and debts | Move money |
| See recurring payments and price changes | Pay bills |
| Read Candor's weekly review of what's worth talking through | Trade |
| Save budgets, goals, notes, and decisions | Open or close accounts |
| Export your organized data when you ask | Cancel subscriptions |

## Can AI move my money through Candor?

No. Candor provides no payment, transfer, trading, or cancellation tools. An agent may have separate tools that can act outside Candor, so review those permissions independently. Read-only financial access also still carries privacy risk.

A policy can change quietly. A missing capability cannot be misused. That is why Candor holds the facts and the follow-up, and leaves action with the agent you already trust, under the permissions you already gave it.

In practice the split looks like this: Candor's weekly review raises what's worth talking through, with the records behind each item. Your agent brings it to you. You decide. If the decision needs action outside Candor, your agent asks you before it acts, and the decision stays in Candor so the next check-in can confirm it happened.

- [Try it: follow a refund until it posts](https://candor.money/explore/refund-follow-up)

## How does bank sign-in work, and who sees my password?

Candor connects accounts through Plaid's account-linking flow. Candor does not receive your bank password, and your agent does not need it. Use the linking screen rather than entering credentials into a chat.

Your bank and Plaid handle the connection flow, which varies by institution. Candor keeps the provider connection credentials on its backend. The credentials your agent uses to access Candor are separate from those bank-connection credentials.

## What does my agent's access actually include?

Only what you approve in the browser. When your agent connects, Candor shows what it is asking for: reading your workspace, keeping budgets, goals, notes, and corrections, refreshing the accounts you connected, and staying connected in the background. Connecting or removing accounts stays with you in Candor. You approve once, and you can disconnect it later from the Connections page.

Access is granted to an agent client, such as a Claude connector or a CLI install, not to each individual process. Any agent that can use that approved client can read within its scope, so disconnect clients you no longer use.

You also choose what goes in. Candor only sees the accounts you connect or the statements you import. Leave an account out and no agent sees it through Candor.

- [The Candor Finance MCP server](https://candor.money/mcp)
- [The Candor CLI for agents](https://candor.money/candor-cli-for-ai-agents)

## Is every read of my financial data logged?

Yes. Every operation your agent runs in Candor, including every read, is recorded as an entry that cannot be edited, with its reason, and kept for as long as your workspace exists. You can review that history on the Activity page. The log says what kind of data was read, when, and why, without copying your raw financial data into it.

Reasons are the agent's own words, such as checking whether a price increase has been billed again. They make the history useful to you and to the next agent: you can see what was looked at and why. A reason is not approval. Anything that needs your decision still comes to you.

## Does Candor train AI on my data or sell it?

No. Candor never sells your financial data, never uses it for advertising, and never trains models on it. When Candor uses outside services to organize transactions, they run under zero-data-retention settings. What your agent reads from Candor then follows your agent's own settings, such as ChatGPT's Data controls or Claude's Model Improvement setting.

That last point is worth acting on. Candor controls what Candor stores. The conversation where your agent discusses your figures lives in ChatGPT, Claude, Muse, or wherever your agent runs. OpenAI says ChatGPT finance chats follow your training setting, Anthropic uses Claude consumer chats for training when Model Improvement is on (and may use a chat flagged for safety review to improve Usage Policy enforcement), and Meta lets you opt out for Muse. Set those the way you want.

- [Is it safe to connect your bank account to AI?](https://candor.money/safe-ai-money-management)
- [Candor privacy policy](https://candor.money/privacy)

## How do I revoke access or delete my data?

Disconnect any agent from the Connections page, and it can no longer read your workspace. Export your organized data from Settings. Delete your account from Settings, which disconnects your institutions, revokes all agent access immediately, removes bank connection credentials, and deletes your workspace, including records, notes, and history.

Disconnecting a single bank ends Candor's access to it and keeps the history you already have, unless you delete your data. Revoking an agent keeps your workspace intact, so approving a different agent later picks up where you left off. Managed backups expire on their own schedule, up to 14 days, and the privacy policy lists every retention period.

- [Candor trust and data controls](https://candor.money/trust)

## Why is read-only enough for a financial advisor's job?

Many useful financial tasks begin with reading records: reviewing spending, comparing recurring charges, checking budget progress, and gathering questions. Candor supplies those records and every week raises what's worth reviewing; your agent discusses the choices with you.

Candor is not a licensed advisor and gives no advice. Your agent makes suggestions from the figures, and you make the call. Keeping action outside Candor is what makes it reasonable to give an agent a complete view of your money.

- [The AI personal finance agent](https://candor.money/ai-personal-finance-agent)

## Common questions

### Does read-only access mean an AI cannot leak financial data?

No. Read-only limits changes to accounts; it does not prevent disclosure of information an agent can read. Protect the agent account, review its data settings and other tool permissions, and disconnect access you no longer need.

### Is read-only enforced, or just promised?

Enforced by what Candor ships. Candor has no tool that moves money, pays bills, trades, or changes anything at a financial institution, so read-only does not depend on an agent behaving well. There is nothing in Candor for it to misuse.

### What can my agent write to Candor?

Only workspace records: budgets, goals, notes, decisions, category corrections, and confirmed recurring payments, worked out with you. Each write is logged with its reason. None of it reaches your bank.

### Is ChatGPT Finances read-only too?

OpenAI says ChatGPT's Finances connection cannot see full account numbers or make any changes to your accounts. The differences are elsewhere: it works only inside ChatGPT, OpenAI's materials do not describe a read history like Candor's (answers may cite the source data), and your chats follow your ChatGPT training setting.

### Can I choose which accounts my agent sees?

Yes. Candor only holds the accounts you connect or the statements you import. Leave an account out and no agent can read it through Candor. You can disconnect an institution later without deleting your history.

### What happens when I revoke an agent's access?

It stops working at once. Your records, budgets, goals, notes, and history stay in your workspace, so approving a different agent later, or the same one again, starts from everything already saved.

## Sources

- [Privacy policy](https://candor.money/privacy), Candor
- [Trust and data controls](https://candor.money/trust), Candor
- [A new personal finance experience in ChatGPT](https://openai.com/index/personal-finance-chatgpt/), OpenAI, 2026-10-02
- [Finances in ChatGPT](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001222-finances-in-chatgpt), OpenAI, 2026-10-07
- [Is my data used for model training? (Claude consumer plans)](https://privacy.claude.com/en/articles/10023580-is-my-data-used-for-model-training), Anthropic, 2026-03-16
- [Introducing Muse](https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse-personal-ai-agent/), Meta, 2026-09-08

## Keep reading

- [Is it safe to connect ChatGPT to your bank account?](https://candor.money/is-it-safe-to-connect-chatgpt-to-your-bank-account)
- [Is it safe to connect your bank account to AI?](https://candor.money/safe-ai-money-management)
- [ChatGPT Finances and what to use instead](https://candor.money/chatgpt-personal-finance)
- [Claude for personal finance](https://candor.money/claude-personal-finance)
- [The AI personal finance agent](https://candor.money/ai-personal-finance-agent)
- [Can AI be your financial advisor?](https://candor.money/can-ai-be-your-financial-advisor)
- [Era Context review and alternative](https://candor.money/era-alternative)
- [Is Chase blocking AI agents?](https://candor.money/chase-blocking-ai-agents)
- [Is Plaid safe?](https://candor.money/is-plaid-safe)
- [Is SimpleFIN safe? SimpleFIN vs Plaid](https://candor.money/is-simplefin-safe)
- [Where do I actually stand?](https://candor.money/explore/first-pass)
- [Was that charge a duplicate?](https://candor.money/explore/duplicate-charges)

## Bring your agent the money question you've been putting off.

Connect your accounts to Candor and approve your agent. It works through the question from your real records, Candor keeps the plan you settle on and its weekly review raises what's worth talking through, and you can check every read on the Activity page. Agents can install Candor themselves from https://candor.money/START.md.