What makes a debt app worth opening?

Before any code, I made myself answer a harder question: is BNPL tracking alone enough, or is that just a spreadsheet with an icon?

It's a spreadsheet. What Claude and I landed on as the features that make it an app people open:

• The debt-free date. One number that moves. That's the emotional core of the whole product.
• Safe-to-spend — after every scheduled payment clears, what's actually yours this pay period.
• Strategy comparison — avalanche vs. snowball, with interest saved shown in dollars, not lectures.
• Paste-to-import — nobody types eleven installment plans in by hand.
• Milestones — paying off a plan should feel like something.

BNPL management is the wedge, the underserved pain nobody else centers. But the payoff date is the product.