Expense Management Skill Tree

Use this domain for the Expense Management app: expense claims submitted by employees, the approval queue that acts on them, the categories and policies that constrain them, expense reports, and employee expense budget usage. Not this domain: company income, expenses, categories, burn rate, and runway (finance_hub); HR request tickets (employee_helpdesk); approval-routing configuration itself (workflow).

Choose the caller role first

• The user talks about "my expense", submitting, cancelling, or checking their own claim -> employee leaves. Never answer from an approval or report leaf about the caller's own expenses.
• The user acts as an approver (queue, approve, reject) -> approver leaves.
• The user acts as an admin (categories, policies, reports, permissions) -> configuration and reporting leaves. The backend enforces access; a permission_denied means stop, not switch leaf.

Employee leaves

• skills/exm/expenses_overview_help/SKILL.md - Explain the app, its screens, and the expense lifecycle.
• skills/exm/submit_expense_help/SKILL.md - Explain how to submit an expense and what blocks submission.
• skills/exm/expense_status_help/SKILL.md - Explain expense statuses and which actions remain available.
• skills/exm/expense_receipts_help/SKILL.md - Explain receipts, file limits, and AI receipt scanning.
• skills/exm/expense_multi_currency_help/SKILL.md - Explain reimbursement currency and exchange rates.
• skills/exm/list_my_expenses/SKILL.md - List the caller's own expenses; resolve an expense name to its ID here.
• skills/exm/get_expense/SKILL.md - Read one expense in full, including receipts and policy warnings.
• skills/exm/submit_expense/SKILL.md - Submit an expense after category lookup, preview, and confirmation.
• skills/exm/cancel_expense/SKILL.md - Cancel one of the caller's pending expenses after confirmation.

Approver leaves

• skills/exm/expense_approvals_help/SKILL.md - Explain the approval screen and where routing is configured.
• skills/exm/list_expense_approvals/SKILL.md - Read the pending queue, decision history, or counters.
• skills/exm/manage_expense_approval/SKILL.md - Approve or reject one expense, or approve the whole queue.

Configuration and reporting leaves

• skills/exm/expense_categories_help/SKILL.md - Explain expense categories and their deletion rules.
• skills/exm/expense_policies_help/SKILL.md - Explain policy rule types, severities, and lifecycle.
• skills/exm/expense_reports_help/SKILL.md - Explain the expense report and its CSV export.
• skills/exm/expense_permissions_help/SKILL.md - Explain app access versus datablock permissions.
• skills/exm/list_expense_categories/SKILL.md - List categories; resolve a category name to its ID here.
• skills/exm/manage_expense_category/SKILL.md - Create, update, or delete a category after confirmation.
• skills/exm/list_expense_policies/SKILL.md - List policies, or read one with its eligibility and rules.
• skills/exm/manage_expense_policy/SKILL.md - Create, edit, enable, archive, or delete a policy; also runs the read-only conflict check and policy preview.
• skills/exm/get_expense_report_overview/SKILL.md - Read per-employee expense totals by currency, or the flat rows behind the CSV export.
• skills/exm/get_employee_expense_report/SKILL.md - Drill into one employee's expenses from the report.
• skills/exm/get_personal_development_budget_usage/SKILL.md - Report organization-wide personal development budget (PDB, learning or training budget) usage.

Scripts

• Every executable leaf lives at skills/exm/<leaf>/scripts/<leaf>.py (for example skills/exm/list_my_expenses/scripts/list_my_expenses.py). There is no skills/exm/scripts/ directory.
• Identity comes from request headers; never pass a company ID or an employee ID to identify the caller.
• Do not execute this directory as a script skill; execute only the script declared by the chosen leaf SKILL.md.

Identifiers and enums

• Every --expense-id, --category-id, --policy-id, --employee-id, and --department-id is a UUID returned by a read tool. Resolve it first with list_my_expenses, list_expense_approvals, list_expense_categories, list_expense_policies, or the employee directory. Never construct, guess, or reuse a remembered UUID, and never print one in a reply.
• Expense status: PENDING_APPROVAL, APPROVED, REJECTED, CANCELLED, REIMBURSED. Policy status: DRAFT, SCHEDULED, ACTIVE, ARCHIVED. Always render these in plain language for the user.
• Expense actions come only from availableActions on the expense detail (CANCEL, APPROVE, REJECT). Do not offer an action that is not listed there.
• Scripts reject unknown flags; on unknown_args, *_must_be_uuid, or a validation error, fix the call once from the message instead of retrying variants.

App surface and boundaries

• The app exposes: My Expenses (submit, cancel, detail, receipts), Approvals (queue, history, approve, reject, approve all), Reports (per-employee totals, employee drill-down, CSV export), Categories, Policies, and App Permissions.
• Receipt files cannot be uploaded or delivered through chat, and CSV export is downloaded by the browser. Hand those off to the app instead of inventing links or document IDs.
• Expense policies and the Reports screen are not enabled in every environment. When a tool reports not_found or permission_denied for them, say the feature is not available to the caller rather than describing a menu they cannot see.
• Approval routing is configured in the platform Workflows engine, not in this app's permissions.

Safety and authorization

• Employee leaves are restricted by the service to the authenticated employee's own expenses.
• Reporting, category, and policy leaves are intended for authorized administrators and stay subject to the service's access checks.
• Before any write leaf, resolve identifiers, read the current state, show a parameter preview, and stop for explicit confirmation in a later turn. A request to preview, only check, or not submit yet means no write in that turn.
• After a backend validation error on a write, report it and ask the user; do not retry with altered payloads.