Limelight — AI Spending Insights
Limelight is your personal spending analyst. It continuously reviews your transactions and surfaces intelligent observations about your money — spending changes, recurring patterns, new subscriptions, and budget risks — so you can stay informed without digging through numbers yourself.
Limelight analyzes your spending to surface insights, unusual patterns, and actionable recommendations.
On iPad, the Limelight screen uses a split-view layout with sidebar navigation on the left and AI-generated spending insights on the right.
Limelight refreshes automatically when you open the dashboard, and you can trigger a manual refresh at any time. Insights are generated from your last 90 days of transaction history, so the more you use Coincert, the smarter Limelight becomes.
Insight Types
Each Limelight card is labeled with a type badge that tells you what kind of observation it represents.
Off-Key (Unusual Spending)
An Off-Key insight appears when spending in a category changes significantly from the previous month — typically by more than 25%. For example, if your Dining spending jumped from $250 last month to $350 this month, Limelight will flag that as “Dining was up 40% this month.”
Off-Key insights use a gently curious tone. A spending increase does not mean something is wrong — it might be a birthday dinner or a vacation. Limelight acknowledges that life happens and simply brings changes to your attention so you can decide whether they warrant action.
Off-Key also covers individual transaction-level anomalies. When a single charge at a merchant is significantly higher than your typical spending there, Limelight flags it separately. For instance, if your usual Amazon order is around $45 but a new charge is $250, you will see an Off-Key Transaction card explaining that the charge is 5.5 times your typical amount.
How anomaly detection works: Limelight compares each recent transaction against your history with that merchant (or spending category). It calculates a statistical Z-score — a measure of how far a value is from the average. A transaction needs at least 5 similar historical transactions before Limelight will flag it, which prevents false alarms on merchants you rarely visit.
Pattern Detected
Pattern insights reveal recurring trends in your spending behavior. For example, Limelight might notice that your spending peaks on Saturdays, running 35% above your daily average. These observations can help you plan ahead or simply understand your habits better.
New Playlist Item (New Subscription Detected)
When Limelight detects a new recurring payment — three or more transactions to the same payee at consistent amounts within the last 60 days — it surfaces a New Playlist Item card. This helps you catch subscriptions you may have forgotten about or did not realize had started.
The card will name up to three merchants and suggest reviewing them in your Bills section to track them as recurring expenses going forward.
Cue (Budget at Risk)
A Cue insight appears when one of your active budgets is exceeded by 10% or more during its current period. The card shows how much you are over and by what percentage. For example: “Entertainment budget exceeded by 25% — you’re $50 over your $200 limit.”
Cue insights include a suggested action, such as increasing the budget limit or reviewing spending patterns for that category.
Insight Cards
Each insight appears as a compact card on your Limelight dashboard. Cards follow a progressive disclosure pattern: they start collapsed, showing just the type badge, icon, and a one- or two-line title.
Expanding a Card
Tap any card to expand it. The expanded view reveals:
- Detail text — a more complete explanation of the insight, written in a supportive, non-judgmental tone.
- Comparison chart — when available, an inline bar chart shows the data behind the insight. For Off-Key insights, this is typically a “Last Month vs. This Month” comparison. For Off-Key Transactions, it shows “Typical vs. This Time” amounts.
- Suggested action — if applicable, a highlighted recommendation appears at the bottom of the card (for example, “Consider increasing the budget or reviewing spending patterns” or “Tap to view the transaction”).
Tap the card again to collapse it back to the summary view.
Card Colors
Cards are color-coded by tone to give you a quick visual signal:
| Tone | Color | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Curious | Orange | Something changed — worth a look |
| Informative | Blue | Helpful context about your habits |
| Actionable | Green | A specific step you could take |
Dismissing Insights
Every expanded card includes a Dismiss button at the bottom. Dismissing a card removes it from your dashboard. Dismissed insights will not reappear.
For Off-Key Transaction anomalies specifically, dismissing a card also teaches Limelight to be less sensitive to similar transactions in the future. If you repeatedly dismiss anomalies from the same merchant, the detection threshold gradually increases so that only truly unusual charges are flagged.
Reverb — Purchase Impact Calculator
Reverb shows the true cost of a credit card purchase by projecting how much you will actually pay once interest is factored in.
When you view a transaction made on a credit card, the Reverb panel appears and breaks down:
- Purchase amount — the original charge.
- Projected interest — the total interest you will pay if you carry the balance and make your typical monthly payment.
- Total cost — purchase amount plus interest.
- Months to pay off — how long it will take to fully pay off the purchase at your current payment rate.
How Reverb Calculates Interest
Reverb uses your credit card’s APR (Annual Percentage Rate) and your typical monthly payment amount to simulate a month-by-month payoff schedule:
- Each month, interest accrues on the remaining balance at the monthly rate (APR / 12).
- Your monthly payment is applied after interest accrues.
- The simulation continues until the balance reaches zero or a 5-year safety limit is reached.
If your monthly payment is less than or equal to the monthly interest charge, Reverb will warn you that the balance will not decrease and will estimate interest based on 60 months of carrying the balance.
If your card has a 0% APR (such as a promotional rate), Reverb will show no interest charges and simply calculate the months to pay off based on the purchase amount divided by your monthly payment.
Reverb Footer
At the bottom of the Reverb panel, a contextual note explains the assumptions behind the calculation, including the APR used and the monthly payment amount. If no interest applies, the footer confirms “Paid in full — no interest charges.”
Confidence Indicators
Limelight uses statistical confidence levels to communicate how certain it is about an observation, particularly for Off-Key anomaly detection.
| Confidence | Z-Score Range | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| High | Greater than 3.0 | Very unusual — strongly deviates from your history |
| Medium | 2.5 to 3.0 | Notably different from your typical pattern |
| Low | 2.0 to 2.5 | Somewhat unusual but within a wider range |
Higher-confidence anomalies are styled with an actionable (green) tone, while lower-confidence ones use the curious (orange) tone. This helps you prioritize which insights to investigate first.
Only high and medium confidence anomalies trigger notifications.
Platform Differences
iPhone iPad iPhone and iPad
- The Limelight dashboard uses a single-column scrolling layout.
- The top three insights appear under Today’s Highlights, with remaining insights in a More Limelights section below.
- Pull-to-refresh is supported: swipe down on the Limelight screen to re-analyze your transactions.
- A coaching section appears at the top of the dashboard (when coaching messages are available), showing up to 5 recent messages with a “See All” link for the full history.
- A What If? explorer card links to the scenario planning tool.
- A timestamp at the top right shows when insights were last updated.
Mac Mac
- The Limelight dashboard uses a two-column grid layout that takes advantage of the wider screen.
- All insights are displayed in the grid without the Highlights/More split used on iPhone.
- A header at the top shows “Your Limelights” along with the total count (for example, “5 limelights”) and the last-updated timestamp.
- Instead of pull-to-refresh, use the Refresh button in the toolbar to re-analyze your transactions.
- The What If? explorer card appears above the insight grid.
Tips
- More transactions means better insights. Limelight needs at least 5 similar transactions at a merchant before it can flag an Off-Key anomaly, and at least 3 consistent payments to detect a New Playlist Item.
- Dismissing is not ignoring. When you dismiss an Off-Key Transaction, you are telling Limelight that this kind of charge is normal for you. It adjusts its sensitivity accordingly.
- Check Reverb before big purchases. Before making a significant credit card charge, visit Reverb to understand the long-term cost if you carry the balance.
- Cue insights respond to your budgets. If you are not seeing Cue cards, make sure you have active budgets set up in Coincert.