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Asking Vesper

This page shows how to ask Vesper about your household’s money and what Vesper can see.

Use Vesper when you want an answer in words instead of reading a chart. For example: “How much is left in the Groceries pocket?” or “What did we spend on the school trip in May?”

Vesper is your family’s private assistant. Vesper’s answers come from an AI model: Anthropic Claude, run for us by Google Cloud Vertex AI in the EU. If Claude is unavailable, Google Gemini on Vertex AI in the EU answers the same question.

A pocket is a place in your budget where you tuck money for one purpose. For example, €200 tucked into the Groceries pocket is set aside for groceries.

Vesper is included in some plans. If your plan does not include Vesper, the Plan page shows which plans do.

Asking a question

Section titled “Asking a question”
  1. Select Ask Vesper at the bottom right of any page. You can also press Ctrl+K, or Cmd+K on a Mac. The chat window opens.
  2. If Nestbalm asks for permission to use AI, read the notice, then select Allow. Nestbalm remembers your choice.
  3. Type your question and send it. Vesper looks up the numbers it needs and answers in the chat window.
  4. To ask a follow-up, type it in the same window. Vesper remembers the earlier questions in this conversation.

Vesper’s answers are AI-generated and are not investment, tax, or legal advice. Check a number on the Budget or Transactions page before you act on it.

What Vesper can see

Section titled “What Vesper can see”

To answer, Vesper reads your household’s data through a fixed set of look-ups. The AI model never has direct access to the database. Vesper can look up:

  • the budget summary for a month, including money that is Ready to Tuck,
  • how much is in each pocket,
  • your recent transactions,
  • the Budget Operations runs that are waiting for review,
  • the data-check findings of a Budget Operations run,
  • the pocket corrections your household made recently.

Ready to Tuck is money that has come in but hasn’t been given a purpose yet.

Changes Vesper suggests

Section titled “Changes Vesper suggests”

If you ask Vesper to move a transaction to another pocket, Vesper does not move it. Vesper creates a proposal instead.

  1. Ask Vesper to categorise a transaction. To categorise a transaction is to choose which pocket it belongs to. Vesper confirms that it created a proposal.
  2. The household owner opens Agent proposals and approves or rejects it. Nothing changes until the owner approves. After approval, the transaction moves to the new pocket for everyone in the household.

Letting Vesper run Budget Operations

Section titled “Letting Vesper run Budget Operations”

Budget Operations is the review Nestbalm opens after each import. The household owner can let Vesper run its steps. This setting is off until the owner switches on Let Vesper run Budget Operations on the Budget Settings page.

When it is on, Vesper acts directly, without a proposal. Vesper can submit transfer pairs, pocket suggestions and data-check findings, and can close the review. Everyone in the household sees the results in Budget Operations. The owner can switch the setting off at any time; Vesper then stops acting on Budget Operations.

What changed

Section titled “What changed”

A question on its own changes nothing in your budget. Only an approved proposal, or a Budget Operations step Vesper runs with the owner’s setting on, changes anything. Your question and the data Vesper needed were sent to the AI model to write the answer. Under the Google Cloud Vertex AI terms, this data is not used to train AI models.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”