"What did I spend on restaurants last month?" "Can I afford $2,800 a month in rent?" "Why is my net worth down this quarter?" These are the questions people actually have about their money, and they're usually buried under a spreadsheet or a dozen taps through an app. Marmot's chat answers them directly, in plain language, over your own connected data.
Read-only, on purpose
Chat can't move money, can't change an account, and can't touch a transaction. It answers questions and explains findings — that's the whole surface area. Findings and computed gaps are handed to it as structured context; it doesn't recompute your match or your net worth on the fly. The calculator is a deterministic, tested function. The chat is a translator, not a second calculator.
No investment advice, ever
Marmot's chat does not recommend securities, allocations, or a buy/hold/sell decision — not as a headline feature, not as a casual aside in a longer answer. It will tell you what your idle cash is costing you in missed yield. It will not tell you where to put it. That line is deliberate: Marmot quantifies facts about your own accounts and benefits; it stays out of the business of telling you what to buy.
Every number traces to something real
A numeric answer in chat always traces back to a Plaid record or a computed finding — never an estimate presented as fact. If chat doesn't have the data to answer precisely, it says so and tells you what would close the gap, the same honesty rule that governs every dollar figure in the app.