Introduction

ClawCounting is a foundational double-entry bookkeeping engine designed for AI agents. It ships as a single Rust binary backed by a single SQLite database file.

It is a platform, not an end-user application – it provides the primitives (currencies, accounts, journal entries, periods, balances, reports) that more complex systems are built on top of. Consuming systems – whether AI agents, ERPs, invoicing systems, or custom business logic – use the API or CLI to build domain-specific workflows (AR/AP, payroll, tax, reconciliation, approvals, etc.).

Key Features

• Double-entry accounting – every journal entry must balance (total debits == total credits), with minimum 2 lines, all in the same currency
• Immutable journal – journal entries are append-only; corrections via reversing entries only
• Financial periods – fiscal year management with permanent close, automatic closing entries
• Subledger support – control accounts with per-entity sub-accounts (AR/AP by customer/vendor)
• Multi-currency – fiat (ISO 4217) and crypto (ERC-20, native coins) via CAIP-19 identifiers, with full wei-precision (i128 amounts)
• Two interfaces – REST API (for agents and web UI) and CLI (for scripts, cron, admin) sharing the same service layer
• Built-in web UI – SvelteKit SPA embedded in the binary
• OpenAPI docs – auto-generated spec with Swagger UI
• Agent Skill – agentskills.io standard skill for teaching AI agents accounting workflows
• Zero deployment overhead – no Docker, no external database servers, no runtime dependencies

Design Philosophy

• Single-tenant – each deployment serves one tenant. Multi-tenant = separate instances.
• Server and CLI share the same service layer – identical validation, business logic, and transactions regardless of how you interact with it.
• The API enforces correctness – balanced entries, period rules, subledger constraints. The less computation delegated to the calling agent, the fewer errors.
• Structured errors with recovery guidance – every error includes a suggestion field telling the caller how to fix it.
• Trivially deployable – copy one binary, run it. The SQLite .db file is your entire database.

Tech Stack