plaid_skill

Overview

This skill is a Plaid banking API expert that helps developers integrate bank connectivity, ACH, transactions, identity, balances, and webhooks into fintech apps. It provides practical guidance for Plaid Link flows, token exchange, data retrieval, webhook handling, and security best practices. The skill focuses on production-ready patterns for building account connections, ACH transfers, and transaction history syncs.

How this skill works

The skill inspects typical Plaid integration steps: creating link tokens, exchanging public tokens for access tokens, and calling Plaid endpoints for Auth, Transactions, Balance, Identity, and Investments. It outlines webhook handling for transaction updates and item errors, plus environment selection (sandbox, development, production). It also covers pagination, re-authentication (Link update mode), and common error handling patterns like rate limiting and ITEM_LOGIN_REQUIRED.

When to use it

• Building bank connection flows with Plaid Link
• Fetching transactions and syncing transaction history
• Retrieving account/routing numbers for ACH payouts
• Verifying account ownership and user identity via bank data
• Implementing real-time balance checks in accounts
• Handling Plaid webhooks and connection errors

Best practices

• Store Plaid access tokens encrypted and never expose secrets client-side
• Use environment variables for PLAID_CLIENT_ID and PLAID_SECRET
• Verify webhook signatures and use HTTPS for all endpoints
• Implement pagination and incremental sync for large transaction sets
• Use exponential backoff for rate-limit responses and retryable errors
• Create Link tokens in server-side endpoints; use Link update mode for re-authentication

Example use cases

• Connect user bank accounts with Plaid Link and exchange tokens server-side
• Fetch up to 24 months of transactions and run merchant categorization
• Retrieve ACH account and routing numbers for initiating ACH transfers
• Use identityGet to confirm account owner name, email, and phone for KYC checks
• Subscribe to TRANSACTIONS webhooks to trigger background syncs on DEFAULT_UPDATE