AI Auto-Categorization

Curl Budget can automatically suggest categories for new transactions using AI. You choose whether the AI runs on-device (private, free, no data leaves your phone) or in the cloud (slightly higher accuracy, transaction data sent to the AI provider). AI suggestions are opt-in — you turn them on in your workspace AI settings, and you can turn them off at any time.

How It Decides

When a new transaction arrives:

Auto-rules run first. If any rule matches, its action wins — AI never overrides a deterministic rule you wrote.
AI runs only on uncategorized transactions that no rule matched.
The AI looks at your category history — your existing categorizations and category names — and picks the best match for the new transaction's merchant, description, and amount.
Your manual edits are sticky. Once you set a category yourself (or correct an AI suggestion), Curl Budget remembers and shifts future suggestions for similar transactions toward your choice.

This means the AI gets better the more you use Curl Budget — not by training a global model, but by tailoring suggestions to your own category structure.

On-Device AI (Private)

On supported devices, AI categorization runs entirely on your phone. No transaction data is sent over the network for categorization.

Platform	Engine	Minimum device
iOS	Apple Foundation Models	iPhone 15 Pro / iPhone 16 or later, iOS 26+, Apple Intelligence enabled
Android	ML Kit GenAI (Gemini Nano)	Pixel 9+, Galaxy Z Fold7, and other supported devices

When on-device AI is available and enabled, your transaction descriptions, merchant names, and category names are processed locally — they never leave your device for categorization purposes. (Bank-sync data still flows through Plaid as usual; this only affects the AI categorization step.)

Cloud AI (OpenAI)

If your device doesn't support on-device AI, or you prefer cloud AI, Curl Budget can route categorization through OpenAI. Your transaction descriptions and merchant names are sent to OpenAI's API for categorization. OpenAI's data-handling terms apply.

You can switch between on-device and cloud AI under your workspace AI settings.

Rules Take Priority

The categorization order is always:

Manual category set by you → keeps that category
Matching auto-rule with Assign Category action → applies the rule's category
AI suggestion → applies if rule didn't fire and you haven't set one manually

If you want a transaction always categorized a specific way regardless of AI, write an auto-rule. Rules are deterministic; AI is probabilistic. Rules win.

When Suggestions Are Generated

Under your workspace AI settings, the Auto-categorize on import toggle controls when AI runs:

On (default) — AI generates suggestions automatically when new transactions sync. Transactions arrive with a suggested category attached, ready for review.
Off — AI runs only when you trigger it manually from the AI Review tab.

Reviewing AI Decisions

AI suggestions are queued for review under Organize → AI Review. From there you can:

Confirm batches of correct suggestions in one tap
Override suggestions that need correction
Trigger a new AI pass manually if auto-categorize is off

Anything you correct updates the AI's understanding of your category structure for future transactions.

When Rules Are Better

AI is good at handling new merchants and the long tail of one-off purchases. Rules are better for patterns where you want guaranteed behavior:

Recurring subscriptions you always want categorized the same way
Bank-specific descriptions that the AI keeps misreading
Sweeping behavior like "every transaction from my business card → tag 'Business'"

Use AI for everything you don't have an opinion on. Use auto-rules for the patterns where you do.

Privacy Summary

On-device AI: transaction text never leaves your phone for categorization.
Cloud AI (OpenAI): transaction descriptions and merchant names are sent to OpenAI; their terms apply.
Either mode: account numbers, balances, exact amounts, transaction dates, your name, and your email are not part of the AI step — only the descriptive text needed to pick a category.
You can disable AI entirely under your workspace AI settings if you'd rather categorize everything via rules and manual selection.

Data Contribution (Opt-In)

A separate Data Contribution toggle is in your AI settings, and the same option is available when you first enable AI suggestions. With it on, when you correct or reject an AI suggestion Curl Budget may anonymously retain the data it used to make that suggestion — so we can evaluate and improve suggestion quality. Specifically, the retained data is:

The merchant name (or transaction description, if the bank didn't supply a merchant)
Your category names
The correct category you chose for that merchant

Account numbers, balances, exact amounts, transaction dates, your name, email, and IP address are not part of this — they aren't needed to learn merchant-to-category pairings.

This toggle is off by default. You can turn it on or off at any time. Turning it off stops new corrections from being retained, stops using your previously contributed data for AI improvement work, and triggers reasonable efforts to remove your prior contributions from active improvement datasets within the same windows as our standard data retention policy. Contributions are anonymous and not linked back to your account.

For more on Curl's overall data handling, see Data Protection.

Auto-Rules — deterministic rules that take priority over AI
Categories — the categories AI picks from
Data Protection — what data leaves your device, and when