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Rule Diagnostics

Rule Diagnostics is a read-only, advisory linter for your rules — a capability Actual Budget has no equivalent for. It never modifies, creates, or deletes anything as a side effect, and it runs entirely in the browser against your current working set, including unsaved staged edits.

Open Rule Diagnostics from the Tools sidebar section, or the Diagnostics button on the Rules toolbar. The URL /rules/diagnostics is bookmarkable.

Why this doesn’t exist in Actual Budget

Section titled “Why this doesn’t exist in Actual Budget”

Actual Budget runs rules but gives you no way to audit them in aggregate. As a rule set grows, problems accumulate silently — a rule pointing at a deleted category, two rules that quietly shadow each other, near-duplicate rules that should be one. Rule Diagnostics surfaces all of these in one place, explains each in plain language, and links you straight to the fix.

Run diagnostics and read findings

Section titled “Run diagnostics and read findings”
  1. Open Rule Diagnostics (Tools sidebar, or the Diagnostics button on the Rules toolbar).
  2. Findings are grouped by severity with summary cards for error, warning, and info, plus severity- and code-based filters.
  3. Each finding has a plain-language explanation, the affected rule’s summary, and a copy-UUID button.

What it checks

Section titled “What it checks”
  • Missing payee / category / account / category-group references.
  • Empty or no-op actions.
  • Impossibly contradictory conditions on and-rules.
  • Strictly shadowed rules within a stage.
  • Broad match criteria (very short contains / matches values).
  • Duplicate rule groups and near-duplicate pairs.
  • Unsupported field/operator combinations.

Schedule-generated rules are excluded from editor-relevant checks but still surface missing-entity findings.

Act on findings

Section titled “Act on findings”
  • Click a finding’s rule summary to jump to the rule (/rules?highlight=<id>) and open it.
  • Duplicate and near-duplicate findings have a one-click Merge button that opens the merge dialog pre-filled; you’re returned to the diagnostics report afterward.
  • A stale-results banner appears if the working set changes while the view is open; results stay until you Refresh.

Safety

Section titled “Safety”

Diagnostics is advisory — it only reads. It never changes your rules; every fix is an explicit action you take (jump to a rule, or confirm a merge) that then follows the normal staged Save flow.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”
  • A missing-entity finding — the referenced payee/category/account was deleted or renamed; open the rule and repoint it.
  • Results look stale — the working set changed; click Refresh.
  • A large stage isn’t fully analyzed — very large rule partitions are analyzed up to a safety cap; a notice explains when a partition is skipped.
Section titled “Related pages”