CT260 · session ramsey · 2026-07-10

Keith's budget now runs on the baby-steps path

Educational like Ramsey, competitive, giver-aware. Built, independently driven end-to-end, and verified clean. Nothing moves real money, prepare-and-confirm everywhere.

SHIPPED + VERIFIED REAL NUMBERS: TUESDAY

What shipped

Baby-steps spine

$1,000 cushion → debts smallest-first → 3–6 months of expenses → tow-truck seed, exit-UPS fund, planned Giving. Every money answer names where Keith is on the path plus the ONE next move. New budget.js babystep, woven into status, plan, and both check-ins.

Debt snowball store

debt add / list / paid, ordered smallest-first. Deliberately empty, his real debts get written down together Tuesday, never assumed. Paying one off celebrates and rolls the payment onto the next.

Weekly check-in, wired

checkin --weekly stays under 10 lines: in/out this week, set-asides, safe-to-spend, one win, one gentle note, the next move. A budget-weekly reminder now fires Fridays with 6pm delivery through the existing notify → Telegram path. First fire 7/17.

Competitive edge

Streaks and personal records from real transaction data, weeks under budget, no-eating-out, fastest goal filled, beat-last-month. Celebrates loudly, never scolds a restart. Text progress bars on every goal.

Literacy tidbits, state-capped

budget.js tidbit rotates compound interest, true cost of financing, cushion logic, plain driver-life language, hard-capped at one per week by state, not memory.

Panel Money card

Now renders the baby-step line and a streak chip when one is alive. Fully defensive, old snapshots render exactly as before.

Verified for real

W9 acceptance test passed: tow-truck + December-trip goals created, monthly set-aside auto-computed ($120/mo), one calm plan, panel snapshot correct.
"I don't have a budget, help me start one this week" → income + bucket + expense logged, 6-line weekly check-in with real numbers, weekly reminder in place, no double-fire.
Baby step moved 1 → 2 → 3 correctly as the cushion hit $1,000 and both test debts snowballed to zero.
Guardrails intact: no bank/transfer code path exists; all 5 hard rules, the Giving section, and the tone rules survive in the skill; every skill-documented command exists.
No live ping ever reached Keith's phone during build or test; budget data ends verified clean ($0/$0, zero test residue).
Verifier caught a leftover test-bill reminder that would have pinged Keith, a phantom −$400 bucket, and a stale plan file in the cleanup tooling found → fixed → re-proven

Tuesday with Keith

Seed real numbers: income, fixed bills, current savings.
Write down his actual debts, smallest first, the snowball starts there.
Set the weekly check-in day/time to his schedule (default is Friday 6pm).
Confirm the Giving amount and the tow-truck target price.
Bank-linking stays his opt-in call, prepare-and-confirm if he wants it.

Until Tuesday: the budget is intentionally empty. Everything degrades gracefully, the agent points Keith at the $1,000 cushion as step one and waits for real numbers.

Try it on the box

budget.js babystep	Where he is on the path + the one next move
budget.js checkin --weekly	The under-10-line Friday recap
budget.js streaks	Live streaks and personal records
budget.js debt list	Snowball order (empty till Tuesday)
budget.js tidbit	This week's literacy nugget, once per week