Drift

Loan calculators are lying to you. They assume no missed payments or withdrawals and frozen interest rates. Drift doesn’t, it shows how your debt really moves, and what happens when you move with it.

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💡 Inspiration

I was "inspired" (read: deeply annoyed) by the bond calculators I used when my wife and I bought our house. Those tools serve exactly one purpose: to show a simple burndown at today’s interest rate. But that’s not how my bond was going to behave. In reality, I added money regularly, withdrew from the bond when I needed to, and the interest rate changed from time-to-time. How did that affect my loan term or monthly payments? The tools couldn’t tell me. I needed something visual, grounded, and responsive to real life.

🚀 What it does

Drift is a finance productivity app that helps you simulate and track how your debt changes over time. You can:

  • Model a loan and see how monthly payments evolve
  • Record changes like extra payments, skipped months, or rate adjustments
  • Run “what if” simulations to test different strategies — what if the interest rate jumps by 0.25%, or worse, 2.5%?

The goal is to make debt more visible, less abstract, and easier to manage.

🔧 How I built it

I leaned heavily into the AI-led approach—letting Bolt write most of the code while I focused on shaping the goals and behavior of the app. That’s the whole point of Bolt, after all.

The built-in documentation helped integrate tools like Supabase quickly. I also experimented with being intentionally vague in prompts to see how the AI interpreted high-level goals—and honestly, it worked. One early result was so spot-on, it changed how I thought about presenting Drift entirely. From that point on, the process felt more like creative collaboration than pure coding.

🧱 Challenges I ran into

Most of the challenges weren’t with the app idea itself—but with giving up control.

  • As an engineer, it was hard not to jump in and restructure the code. Letting go of that instinct was necessary to move fast.
  • Getting the AI to design UI the way I wanted took patience—sometimes it would add fields I didn’t ask for or ignore layout intent. I had to learn to prompt more precisely, and the Enhance Prompt feature helped a lot.
  • Finally, figuring out how to model debt changes in a way that’s both accurate and intuitive was trickier than expected. Real-world debt is messy, but the UI still needs to feel smooth and approachable.

🏆 Accomplishments I’m proud of

  • I shipped a working loan calculator prototype without getting bogged down in polish or tech debt.
  • I gave AI more control than I normally would—and it actually helped accelerate the work.
  • Simulations feel responsive and give useful feedback with minimal input.
  • I finally got this idea off the ground. When the hackathon launched, I knew it was the push I needed—and I didn’t waste it.

🧠 What I learned

  • Clarity of intent beats overly detailed specs—especially with AI.
  • Debt is messy, but visualization brings clarity. People don’t need perfect models; they need to see what’s going on.
  • You can ship real value without perfect code. Momentum matters more than maintainability in the early stages.

🔮 What’s next for Drift

  • AI-generated repayment strategies tailored to your actual loan behavior
  • Track changes to the prime interest rate and link them to flexible-rate debt accounts
  • Enable a “Partner Mode” so you can share accounts with a spouse or business partner
  • Long term: explore bank integrations for live debt syncing

Built With

  • react
  • react-charts
  • react-router
  • superbase
  • tailwindcss
  • vite
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