It started with the news feed problem. Points and miles information is scattered everywhere — subreddits, deal blogs, newsletters, Twitter threads — and most of it is buried under affiliate links and recycled content. I wanted one clean place to see what was actually worth paying attention to, filtered down to the programs and cards I actually use.

Then came the perks problem. Credit card benefits have turned into monthly coupon books. The Amex Platinum has something like fifteen separate credits across eight different vendors. The Citi Strata has a hotel credit that resets annually and is trivially easy to forget. The Chase Sapphire has rotating categories that sound great until you realize you never activated them. Forgetting a $25 dining credit is real money — and across a wallet full of premium cards, the math adds up fast. I needed a place to see every credit, every reset cycle, and mark things used so I didn't leave value on the table.

The points vault came last, but it might be the most useful part. I had balances spread across six or seven programs with no clear picture of what I actually had — or what it was worth. Points aren't worth a fixed amount; they're worth what you redeem them for. I wanted to attach a real, editable cents-per-point value to each balance and see a total portfolio number that meant something.

Coupled with all of that was the fact that I wanted to go deeper on Python and Django, get serious about web design, and figure out what the new generation of AI tools could actually do in a real application. Points Commander is the product of all of those things at once — a working tool I use every day, built to teach myself how to build it.