Using Claude as a thinking partner

The most useful habit: ask before assuming

Most users discover the Spendesk MCP's limits by accident — by asking a question Claude can only half-answer. There's a better approach: ask Claude directly what it can do, before even phrasing your final request.

Claude knows the exact list of available Spendesk MCP tools. So for a given need, it can tell you:

• Which tools it would use.
• Whether the need is fully covered, or only approximated.
• What workaround exists if coverage is partial.
• How to turn all of that into a reusable skill or routine.

What we already know is out of reach for the MCP

Three tools come up repeatedly in client requests but don't exist in the current Spendesk MCP:

• get_budgets — no native budget-vs-actual comparison (only an approximation via spendesk_analyze_spend).
• get_payable_events — no event log on a payable. For a supplier invoice, the approval chain (who approved it, when, with what note) can be read with get_invoice_by_id.
• get_bank_transactions — no direct transaction-level bank reconciliation.

And a limitation that recently evolved: write tools are in Beta and off by default. Claude can read your Spendesk data, and 26 write tools exist — suppliers, payables, purchase orders, chart of accounts, accounting exports, analytical fields — but each write permission must be enabled by an Admin or Account Owner, then ticked by the user. There is still no tool to approve, pay, read budgets, or create or change cards, users or cost centers.

If Claude tells you one of these is blocking your need, that's not a phrasing problem — it's a real MCP limitation today.

The prompt to use for any new need

This is the core of this chapter — a reusable prompt for any business situation, to copy and adapt:

Here's my need: [describe your business situation in 2-3 sentences, with context — your role, desired frequency, end goal].

Based on the available Spendesk MCP tools (spendesk_analyze_spend, spendesk_get_due_invoices, get_payables, get_suppliers, get_purchase_orders, get_requests, list_cards, get_cost_centers, get_settlements, get_wallet_summary, etc.):

1. Which MCP tools would you use to answer this need?
2. Is this need fully covered by the Spendesk MCP, or is there a limitation (e.g. no webhooks/real-time alerts, write tools in Beta and off by default, no approval or payment tool, no budgets)?
3. If it's not fully covered, propose a concrete workaround.
4. Draft me a reusable skill or prompt for this need.

A concrete example of what this produces

In this example, Claude explicitly confirms full coverage — that's just as valuable as flagging a limitation: it saves you from hunting for a workaround you don't actually need.

Closing the loop

Once Claude has assessed your need, what comes next depends on its answer:

• Full coverage, one-off need → download the generated skill and install it.
• Full coverage, recurring need → turn it into a routine.
• Recurring need + team-wide visibility → wire it to Slack.
• Partial coverage → note the workaround Claude proposed, and keep in mind that the skills library keeps growing as the MCP is updated.

For every role: this prompt works just as well for a very specific need ("I just want this one number") as for a broader project ("I want to automate my whole month-end close") — the more precise your initial description, the more immediately actionable Claude's answer will be.