break-trace

break-trace is an agent skill from the anthropics/financial-services collection for finding the root cause of a reconciliation break. A break is a row where the general ledger and a subledger disagree, and the skill follows the audit trail from that row back to the transaction or posting that created it on each side. It pulls the general ledger side, identifying the journal entry or posting, its date, source system, batch and preparer, and it pulls the subledger side, identifying the matching trade, its dates, counterparty, source feed and any foreign exchange rate used. It then lines up the attributes, such as posting date, exchange rate and date, account mapping, and the sign of quantity and amount, because the attribute that differs is usually the cause. The result is a single-sentence root cause statement in the form of what one side did and why. Examples in the skill include a timing break from a different posting date, an exchange rate break from a different rate source, a mapping break where a security is mapped to the wrong account, and a duplicate post. It is useful for reconciliation teams who need to clear breaks and explain them. A root cause should be confirmed against the source records by the person responsible for the reconciliation, and fixes to postings are made through the normal controls, not by the trace itself. The skill is installed with the skills CLI from the anthropics/financial-services repository. Its skills.sh page showed about 1.2K installs and passing results from three security audits at the time of the scan.…