Hope everyone had a great August!
We have a fresh and exciting edition of the Community Spotlight this month as we’ll be spotlighting an open source tool for the Lunch Money web experience (with a call for contributions!) along with a recap of our very first community meetup in Toronto!
Our August Community Spotlight is on Adam Taylor, the creator of Money Mover, a Chrome plugin that adds keyboard shortcuts to Lunch Money.
Q: Hi Adam, I think you were one of the early adopters of Lunch Money. Is that right?
I started using Lunch Money within the first few months of Jen’s announcement on Hacker News. I was building my own money management app (as software devs are apt to do), and I found that it was tougher than I initially expected.
When I discovered Lunch Money, I found that it did everything I wanted and a bit more! The developer API was also a huge bonus since I could build applications on top of my data which allowed me to manage much of my account via my own CLI (Command Line Interface) tool.
Q: I first became aware of you when you posted in Discord about a Chrome plugin you were working on to add keyboard shortcuts. What prompted you to start that project?
I’m a software engineer, and as such I spend a LOT of time at my keyboard. I use a ZSA Moonlander keyboard, so I’ve got a very ergonomic setup, and I like to keep my hands on the keyboard as much as possible. To that end, I really love it when websites give you keyboard access. Gmail is a great example of a terrific keyboard shortcut experience that enables me to clean up my inbox in mere minutes.
I also use a 5k monitor so I get a bunch of data on my screen at once, and rather than having to mouse over to click something, it’s nice to just hit some keys to do whatever I need to do.
Q: Did you always plan to share Money Mover with other Lunch Money users?
At first, I built Money Mover just for myself in a way that mimics Vim’s modal editing, where most commands are mnemonic. For example, “Go to Transactions” is just “gt” on the keyboard.
After posting the initial proof of concept in the Lunch Money Discord, I found several other folks wanted to use it. So I cleaned up the code a bit and wrote some instructions in the README about how to install it. A few other users have since added their own shortcuts and contributed back to the original project.
I had planned to make this available in the Chrome extension store, but that turned out to be more work than I wanted to take on. Having said that, I’d be happy if someone wanted to fork my project and carry the ball over the goal line.
Q: If users decide to use Money Mover, how can they feel confident that the data it is accessing isn’t being shared with any 3rd parties?
Well, for one—you can look at the code! All the commands are simply accessing elements in the DOM (Document Object Model) and clicking elements for you. One of the beautiful things about open-source software is that it has eyes on it. It’s hard to sneak in anything nefarious.
Furthermore, you could open the Developer Tools in your browser and look at the network tab to see that there are no outbound network requests that go to any server other than Lunch Money. At the end of the day, plugins and extensions are always a minor security risk. However, I think having a large group of technical users who all inspect and contribute to the code helps mitigate the risk.
Q: Is there anything you’d like to ask the Lunch Money user community for?
I’ve been quite busy recently which means I haven’t had much time to implement community requests and bug fixes. If anyone would like to take on the maintenance of the code, I’d be happy to consider adding another contributor. Alternatively, if someone would like to fork the repo and use it as the basis for a new project, I’d be OK with that as well.
Thanks Adam! We really appreciate your contributions to the Lunch Money developer ecosystem as well as helping many folks with questions on Discord over the years.
Interested users can find the Money Mover source code, as well as instructions for installing and using the shortcut in Chromium-based browsers here. Want to get involved with Money Mover as a contributor? Let us know by reaching out to jp@lunchmoney.app!
Lunch Money x Toronto: The first ever Community Meetup!
On Friday, August 2, a group of 22 Lunch Money enthusiasts, aspiring or successful indie hackers, pursuers of the independent lifestyle and general technologists gathered in the Sentry Toronto office for an evening of mingling.
Some very early Lunch Money users were there (pre-Hacker News launch!) as well as Wilson from Lunch Money Pal and a few attendees even brought friends!
We started the evening with some light socializing over pizza. It was great to hear from everyone how they discovered Lunch Money and how it has helped or inspired them over the years! We gave out some stickers, magnets, keychains and pens, and Jen gave a short talk on some exciting news and happenings.
After the official meetup ended, a number of us went out for drinks and live music. It was definitely a night to remember!
Thank you to everyone who attended, making the first ever Lunch Money social hour a success. Finally, a massive thank you to Alex, Billy and Heather at Sentry for allowing us the use of their space and providing us with pizza and beverages!
Would you like to attend a Lunch Money community social hour in your city? Fill out this interest form and let us know where you’re based!
Do you have a Community Story?
We’d love to feature more members of our community in this newsletter. Have you developed an app, plug-in or tool that you want to share? Please reach out to jp@lunchmoney.app!
Even if you aren’t a developer, if you have ideas on how we can make it easier for users to take advantage of contributions from the developer community, I’d love to hear from you.
