Mortgage Coach
Loan officer tool that builds side-by-side loan comparison presentations (Total Cost Analysis) to show borrowers the long-term cost of each option.
The math here is not exotic: amortization schedules, PMI drop-off, points breakeven, net cost after N years, rent versus buy. An agent can build a clean side-by-side scenario comparator with charts and a printable one-pager in a single session, and for a person modeling their own refinance that is genuinely enough. What you cannot one-shot is the part that makes it a business tool: pulling live loan scenarios out of the LOS or pricing engine, compliance-reviewable output your employer will actually let you send to a borrower, and the delivery layer that tracks whether the client opened the presentation. If you are a licensed originator, your DIY version is a scratchpad, not something you put in front of a client. If you are the borrower trying to sanity check what your lender sent you, the DIY version is arguably better because you control the assumptions.
Build verification: not recorded. How we judge buildability
What you give up
- Integrations with loan origination systems, pricing engines and CRMs, so every scenario is typed in by hand
- Compliance-vetted presentation output and audit trail, which is the entire reason a regulated lender licenses this instead of using a spreadsheet
- Borrower engagement tracking: who opened the presentation, how long they looked, which option they clicked
- Polished branded video and mobile presentation formats that agents and borrowers are used to receiving
- Someone else maintaining the edge cases: ARMs, buydowns, MI structures, state-specific cost lines
Why people still pay
Loan officers do not buy this to do arithmetic, they buy it because it turns a rate quote into a story a borrower can act on, and because the output is something their compliance department has already approved for client delivery. The tool also sits inside the workflow: scenarios flow in from the origination and pricing systems, presentations go out through the CRM, and engagement comes back as a lead signal. A self-built comparator gives you the numbers but none of that plumbing, and in a regulated sales process the plumbing is the product.
Your build guide
The stack, security requirements, and agent rules for a focused replacement.
Before you start
- Runtime and tools: TypeScript, React, Node, SQLite and decimal.js for explicit decimal calculations.
- Before starting: A representative CSV with known totals, currency and date conventions, and an agreed calculation specification.
Use these project rules and optional skill references alongside the prompt. Review each skill before adding it to your agent; the AGENTS.md export includes the same guidance.
Project rule — domain: Store Scenario, Principal, RateAssumption, Fee and AmortizationRow; distinguish financed fees from cash costs and define rounding, prepayments and horizon explicitly.
Project rule — scope and recovery: This is an educational calculator, not a loan quote or financial advice. Do not model adjustable rates, taxes or insurance implicitly; missing costs must be disclosed, not treated as guaranteed savings.
Project rule — acceptance: Compare a zero-interest loan and a conventional fixed-rate loan with an extra payment; schedules reconcile principal to zero without divide-by-zero or negative remaining balances.
Project rule — delivery: document real setup commands and permissions; do not claim a build, accuracy level, performance result or security certification that has not been demonstrated.
Recommended skill: web-design-guidelines — review keyboard access, focus, validation, error recovery and the readable work/review interface or HTML report. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Recommended skill: sharp-edges — review configuration and API defaults against the app-specific invariants and recovery boundaries above; this is not a security certification. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Implementation plan
Phase 1
Pin the working slice and create its example input: Compare two to four user-entered loan scenarios with amortization schedules, total paid over chosen horizons and an assumptions-first printout. Confirm setup: A representative CSV with known totals, currency and date conventions, and an agreed calculation specification.
Phase 2
Implement persistence and write-time invariants before decorating the UI: Store Scenario, Principal, RateAssumption, Fee and AmortizationRow; distinguish financed fees from cash costs and define rounding, prepayments and horizon explicitly.
Phase 3
Connect the working view to real saved state. Preserve imported source rows and units, use decimal arithmetic with stated rounding, and retain correction history. Missing values are unknown rather than zero; reports describe records and assumptions rather than giving advice.
Phase 4
Expose the app-specific limits and recovery path in context: This is an educational calculator, not a loan quote or financial advice. Do not model adjustable rates, taxes or insurance implicitly; missing costs must be disclosed, not treated as guaranteed savings.
Phase 5
Walk through this concrete acceptance case and preserve its exported evidence: Compare a zero-interest loan and a conventional fixed-rate loan with an extra payment; schedules reconcile principal to zero without divide-by-zero or negative remaining balances. Finish the README and backup/restore instructions; report unfinished capabilities explicitly.
Build the following focused alternative to Mortgage Coach. This is a deliberately limited personal or small-team substitute, not parity with the paid service. WORKING SLICE Compare two to four user-entered loan scenarios with amortization schedules, total paid over chosen horizons and an assumptions-first printout. SETUP AND ARCHITECTURE Use TypeScript, React, Node, SQLite and decimal.js for explicit decimal calculations. Prerequisites: A representative CSV with known totals, currency and date conventions, and an agreed calculation specification. Before integrating anything, record actual versions and permissions, plus model files or provider limits only where used, in the README; make unavailable dependencies visible rather than simulating success. DOMAIN MODEL AND INVARIANTS Store Scenario, Principal, RateAssumption, Fee and AmortizationRow; distinguish financed fees from cash costs and define rounding, prepayments and horizon explicitly. IMPLEMENTATION CONTRACT Preserve imported source rows and units, use decimal arithmetic with stated rounding, and retain correction history. Missing values are unknown rather than zero; reports describe records and assumptions rather than giving advice. Provide an input/setup view, the main work view, and a review/export view appropriate to this workflow. Preserve the last saved state if a job or save fails. Include empty, loading, permission-denied, partial and retryable-error states. Log identifiers and error categories without secret values or unnecessary private content. APP-SPECIFIC BOUNDARY AND RECOVERY This is an educational calculator, not a loan quote or financial advice. Do not model adjustable rates, taxes or insurance implicitly; missing costs must be disclosed, not treated as guaranteed savings. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIO Compare a zero-interest loan and a conventional fixed-rate loan with an extra payment; schedules reconcile principal to zero without divide-by-zero or negative remaining balances. Also reopen the app after an interrupted operation, confirm the saved record/export remains inspectable, and document the recovery action. These are implementation acceptance requirements, not a claim that this guide has been tested. DELIVERY Deliver a runnable repository with migrations or project-format versioning, a non-sensitive example, environment/permission setup, the exact manual acceptance steps, and a backup/export-and-restore walkthrough. Implement the working slice before optional integrations; list any deferred paid-product capabilities honestly. Do not add capabilities outside the working slice just to resemble the original product. PROJECT RULES FOR AGENTS.md Keep the domain invariants above executable at the write boundary. Propose scope changes before adding providers or permissions. Never fabricate source evidence, publish results, identity matches or successful delivery. Preserve user originals and require an explicit confirmation for destructive changes or external publication.
$ open in your agent (prompt prefilled, you press enter), copy the prompt or copy or download AGENTS.md
prompt copied. want to know what dies next week?
new verdicts + top votes, weekly. free. one-click out.
No prior-art project is listed yet. Compare the scoped build with the paid product before choosing.
Questions about Mortgage Coach
Can you build your own Mortgage Coach with AI?
Partly. The math here is not exotic: amortization schedules, PMI drop-off, points breakeven, net cost after N years, rent versus buy. An agent can build a clean side-by-side scenario comparator with charts and a printable one-pager in a single session, and for a person modeling their own refinance that is genuinely enough. What you cannot one-shot is the part that makes it a business tool: pulling live loan scenarios out of the LOS or pricing engine, compliance-reviewable output your employer will actually let you send to a borrower, and the delivery layer that tracks whether the client opened the presentation. If you are a licensed originator, your DIY version is a scratchpad, not something you put in front of a client. If you are the borrower trying to sanity check what your lender sent you, the DIY version is arguably better because you control the assumptions.
What does the Mortgage Coach build prompt cover?
The prompt starts with this scope: Compare two to four user-entered loan scenarios with amortization schedules, total paid over chosen horizons and an assumptions-first printout. Full-product capabilities excluded from the comparison include: Integrations with loan origination systems, pricing engines and CRMs, so every scenario is typed in by hand; Compliance-vetted presentation output and audit trail, which is the entire reason a regulated lender licenses this instead of using a spreadsheet; Borrower engagement tracking: who opened the presentation, how long they looked, which option they clicked. Follow the implementation plan and its prerequisites before expanding the build.
How do I use the prompt, AGENTS.md and agent skills?
Start with the Mortgage Coach prerequisites and stack, then copy the prompt into your coding agent. Save the project rules as AGENTS.md in the project root. Linked skills are optional packages or source instructions for specific tasks; review their current contents and install only those matching the chosen stack. A skill does not supply API credentials or verify the finished app.
How long will this Mortgage Coach project take?
The catalogue estimate is one sitting for the limited scope. Setup, integration approvals, debugging, deployment and ongoing maintenance can add time. This is an estimate, not a delivery guarantee.
What would I give up by replacing Mortgage Coach?
Integrations with loan origination systems, pricing engines and CRMs, so every scenario is typed in by hand; Compliance-vetted presentation output and audit trail, which is the entire reason a regulated lender licenses this instead of using a spreadsheet; Borrower engagement tracking: who opened the presentation, how long they looked, which option they clicked; Polished branded video and mobile presentation formats that agents and borrowers are used to receiving; Someone else maintaining the edge cases: ARMs, buydowns, MI structures, state-specific cost lines. Loan officers do not buy this to do arithmetic, they buy it because it turns a rate quote into a story a borrower can act on, and because the output is something their compliance department has already approved for client delivery. The tool also sits inside the workflow: scenarios flow in from the origination and pricing systems, presentations go out through the CRM, and engagement comes back as a lead signal. A self-built comparator gives you the numbers but none of that plumbing, and in a regulated sales process the plumbing is the product.
What can I use instead of building Mortgage Coach?
No alternative is listed in this entry yet. That is a gap in this catalogue, not proof that no suitable product exists. Compare the paid product and the proposed scope before committing to a build.