pocket money, properly counted.
pocket money runs on trust and terrible arithmetic. somebody remembers being owed three weeks, somebody else remembers paying last sunday, and the ledger lives nowhere.
the banking apps aimed at children solve this by issuing a card, taking a monthly fee, and onboarding a nine-year-old into a financial product.
a page does the ledger part without any of that: what was earned, what was spent, what is owed, visible to everyone and owned by you.
a ledger, not a bank.
01 / what it isno money moves here. this is a record of what was agreed, earned and spent, which is precisely the part that keeps getting lost. the cash, the card or the jar is still yours to manage however you already do.
the reason to build it rather than install something is that children’s finance apps are financial products with fees and accounts attached, and what you wanted was a shared number that both of you can look at.
- a balance per child, large and first
- the regular weekly or monthly amount, added automatically by date
- extra jobs and what they were worth
- spending, logged as it happens
- a saving-up goal, with how far off it is
- export and import as json
- what it records
- regular amounts, extras earned, spending, and the running balance
- where that goes
- localStorage in one browser. not synced to a child’s phone
- the regular amount
- added by date, so a missed week still counts
- what it is not
- a payment product. no money is held, moved or represented as held
see one in action.
02 / exampletwo children, weekly amounts, extra jobs, and a saving-up goal each
the live example is still being built — the prompt below is the one it was made with.
copy this, then make it yours.
03 / starting prompta starting point, not a template — the point of an agent is that the result is yours. change the sections to match what you want, and remove anything you don’t need.
Build me a pocket money tracker as a single web page.
Ask me first:
- The children's names and what each one gets, and how often.
- Whether extra jobs can be earned, and typical amounts.
- Whether they are saving up for anything specific.
- The currency, and whether to track spending as well as earning.
Build from my answers. Do not invent amounts, jobs, or a savings target.
WHAT IT DOES
- For each child, the current balance is the largest thing on their section. That is the number everyone opens this for.
- The regular amount is added automatically based on the date, so skipping a week does not mean it never happened. Show when it was last added.
- Log an extra job with what it was and what it was worth, in two taps.
- Log spending the same way, with what it was spent on.
- A running history per child, in date order, that adds up to the balance. It has to be checkable — a child who thinks the number is wrong should be able to see why it is not.
- If they are saving for something: the target, how far off, and nothing that guilts them about spending.
DESIGN
- Readable by a child. Plain words, big numbers, no financial jargon.
- Works on a tablet or a laptop in the kitchen.
- Neutral about spending. No frowning faces, no "you could have saved this".
BE HONEST ON THE PAGE
- Say this is a record only and that no actual money is held or moved by the page.
- Say the ledger is stored in this browser, so it should live on one family device — a child opening the same url elsewhere will see an empty page rather than their balance.
STORING THE DATA
- Save everything to localStorage in the browser, automatically, as I go. No
accounts, no login, no server call.
- On the page, say plainly that data lives in this browser only and does not
sync to other devices. Do not bury it.
- Give me an "export" button that copies or downloads everything as JSON, and an
"import" that reads the same JSON back. That is the only way my data can move
between devices, so it is not optional.
- Never lose what I have already entered. If the stored data is from an older
version of the page, read what you can rather than throwing it away.
DELIVERY
- Produce one self-contained HTML file. Inline the CSS and JavaScript.
- No build step, no server, no framework, no package install, no external
requests at runtime.
- Mobile-first and responsive; it has to be usable one-handed on a phone and
still look right on a laptop.
- Accessible: semantic HTML, real contrast, visible keyboard focus, labelled
controls, touch targets big enough to hit, and respect reduced-motion.
- Use placeholders where information is missing. Do not invent facts, numbers,
names, dates, prices, or results I have not given you.
- Before you call it finished, use it yourself: enter real-looking data, reload
the page, and confirm nothing is lost or mangled.
PUBLISHING
Publish the finished page to HTMLShare and give me the link.
Use exactly one of the two paths below, preferring the first. Make the call
directly. Do not route it through a code sandbox, container, or computer-use
session — that is where the request gets blocked, and it is never necessary.
1. An HTMLShare integration or connector, if you have one configured.
The page is permanent and owned by my account. Report the url and the
siteId. There is no claimUrl or manageToken on this path — do not go
looking for one, and do not switch paths in order to produce one.
2. Otherwise, publish anonymously over REST. No account, key, or signup is
needed:
POST https://api.htmlshare.net/v1/publish
content-type: application/json
{"html": "<!doctype html> ... "}
The reference is https://htmlshare.net/docs and, for the full schema,
https://api.htmlshare.net/openapi.json
Report these from the response, in your reply and never inside the page:
url the public page
claimUrl a private link that is mine alone. opening it is how I keep
the page past its 24-hour expiry, or set an email reminder
before it goes. it carries the manage token, so it must
never appear in the published HTML or anywhere a visitor
could see it.
manageToken the only thing that can edit or delete this page later. it is
returned once and never again, so tell me what it is.
Tell me which of the two you used. If the path you reach for first is
unavailable in your environment, say so and tell me what you are switching to
before you publish — a permanent page on my account and a 24-hour anonymous
page are different things, and which one I get is my decision, not a detail.
If I ask for a change afterwards, update the existing page instead of
publishing again, so the URL I have already shared keeps working — through the
same integration on path 1, or with the manage token as an X-Manage-Token
header on path 2.
RECIPE MARKER
Include this tag in the <head>, exactly as written:
<meta name="htmlshare-recipe" content="allowance-tracker">
It tells htmlshare which recipe the page came from, so the library can count
that this one was actually made. It carries nothing else.give it a url.
04 / publishing ithow you publish depends on how you’re working.
- with an integration
- if your assistant already has htmlshare connected — mcp or another supported integration — just ask it to publish the finished page and hand back the url. the page belongs to your account and is permanent. when you want a change, ask for an update to that same page rather than a new one.
- with no integration
- the prompt tells the assistant to post the html to the rest api instead, which needs no account and no key. it comes back with a live url you can open immediately, a private claim link, and a manage token. the claim link is how the page stops being temporary — keep it.
- by hand
- nothing stops you doing it yourself: have the assistant give you the html file and drop it on the htmlshare home page. same url, same page, one more step.
- what matters here
- this is a record two people refer to and occasionally disagree about, so it has to be at one address that does not move. claim it and keep it on the family device.
the ledger is only useful if it is the same ledger next month.
05 / keeping it aroundfine to try the layout. the page stops serving 24 hours after publishing, with a 7-day recovery window, and the balances live in the browser rather than the page.
claimed, it is permanent and at a url the household can learn. for anything involving money owed to a child, one stable record is the entire point.
- keep it around
- a ledger that expires in 24 hours resolves no dispute about last month.
- custom url
- everyone in the house needs to be able to find it, including the people who will not use bookmarks.
- stable updates
- amounts change as children get older. the page changes, the address does not.
questions.
06 / questionsdoes it hold real money?
no. it is a record of what was earned, spent and is owed. no card, no account, no balance held anywhere — the actual money stays however you handle it now, and the page says so.
can my child check their balance on their own phone?
they can open the page, but they will see an empty ledger — storage is per browser. the honest setup is one family device holding the record, which is also the one that avoids two versions of the truth.
is it safe for a child to use?
there is no account, no signup and nothing collected — it is a page. it is public to anyone with the url though, so keep surnames and anything identifying out of it.
what if we get the sums wrong?
edit the entries; the balance is derived from them rather than typed, so correcting a mistake fixes the total. that is why the prompt asks for a checkable history rather than just a number.