VelocityVault

A pre-flight eligibility engine for OfferStack — paste your last 24 months of card approvals once and see exactly which signup bonuses in the catalog you are actually allowed to apply for under every major issuer's velocity rules: Chase 5/24, Amex once-per-lifetime, Citi 8/65, BoA 2/3/4 + 7/12, Cap One 1/6, Barclays 6/24.

Problem

The Active Optimizer holds 5–15+ cards across 4–6 issuers and has to mentally reconstruct every issuer's velocity rule before each new application — Chase counts authorized-user accounts and (new in 2026) most Capital One business cards toward 5/24, Citi caps approvals at 2 per rolling 65 days, BoA's 7/12 counts cards from every issuer, and Amex's once-per-lifetime welcome flag silently kills the bonus on a card you applied for years ago. Today they rebuild this picture from a private spreadsheet, a CardSavvy explainer, and a forum thread three minutes before submitting. OfferStack already knows their wallet and the catalog, but the catalog renders every SUB as eligible — it never asks "would this issuer actually approve you, and would the bonus actually post?"

Target user

The Active Optimizer persona from STRATEGY.md §2 — the power user with 5–15+ cards who already uses OfferStack for the wallet and bookmarks. Job-to-be-done: before clicking "Apply" on a $1,500 SUB, get a one-glance verdict on whether each major issuer's velocity rules will let the application through and let the bonus post — without manually rebuilding a 24-month application history every time. Secondary user is the Aspiring Optimizer stepping into their 3rd–5th card, who needs the rules surfaced as guardrails rather than expected to know them.

MVP scope

• A /tools/velocity-check page where a user pastes (or imports from /wallet) approval date + issuer + product family for each personal and business card from the last 36 months.
• A rule engine that evaluates the seven canonical issuer rules — Chase 5/24, Chase 2/30, Amex 5-credit/10-charge + once-per-lifetime, Citi 1/8 + 2/65 + 1-biz/95 + 48-month family reset, BoA 2/3/4 + 7/12, Cap One 1/6, Barclays 6/24 — and returns one of {eligible, blocked, blocked-until <YYYY-MM-DD>, lifetime-blocked} per offer in the catalog.
• Per-offer "Show math" panel listing which rule fired, which historical applications triggered it, and the earliest date the block lifts (mirrors the LIF-035 calculator audit-detail pattern).
• An "Earliest apply date" sort on /offers so unblocked SUBs surface at the top of the catalog for a logged-in user.
• Free tier: single-session calculator, no persistence, max 25 historical applications, no catalog sort. Pro tier: persist history to a new user_card_history table (RLS owner-only, same shape as the LIF-012 user-scoped tables), nightly recompute, weekly "you became eligible this week" email digest.
• Rule-pack JSON checked into the repo (docs/CHURNING_RULES_SPEC.md + data/issuer_rules.json) so RA can update rules when issuers shift policy without a code deploy.

Monetization

none (internal tool) — feeds the existing OfferStack freemium model. The single-session calculator is the free SEO hook (target keyword cluster: "credit card application eligibility checker 2026", "5/24 status checker"). The persistent application vault, the "earliest apply date" catalog sort, and the weekly eligibility digest sit behind the existing $5–8/mo Pro tier described in STRATEGY.md §5. No new pricing — one more reason to convert the Active Optimizer.

Why now

Chase's 2026 enforcement update flipped most Capital One business cards (e.g. Spark Miles Select) into the 5/24 count for the first time, meaning thousands of churners' eligibility math is now silently wrong in their personal spreadsheets but right in OfferStack's catalog — if the catalog ever asks. Chase also retired the Sapphire 48-month rule in June 2025, so old "do not apply" notes from 2024 are now outdated in the other direction. Both shifts make a rules engine more valuable today than it was six months ago — the rules are getting more dynamic, not less. This also slots into OfferStack's Phase 2 window (started 2026-05-11): /wallet, bookmarks, and the catalog are all mid-migration to Supabase, so a user_card_history table drops in next to them using the same RLS pattern from LIF-012 and the same TanStack Query / Supabase plumbing from LIF-014 and LIF-015.

Risks & open questions

• Demand-side: Does a free single-session checker convert to Pro at the 3–5% rate STRATEGY.md §6.6 targets, or is the persistent vault valuable only to the hardest-core 1% of churners? Validate with a landing-page test before scoping the history table.
• Build-side: Some rules are folklore (Amex's "popup" denial is not a documented policy and is partly heuristic). The engine must label these as heuristic distinct from rule, or the trust-first positioning in STRATEGY.md §6.3 breaks.
• Data freshness: Issuer rules change quietly. The rule-pack needs RA ownership and a refresh cadence — most natural home is AI_AUTOMATIONS_AND_RECOMMENDATIONS.md as a monthly Claude-drafted PR, mirroring the LIF-047 CPP-update pipeline.
• Scope creep: Eligibility-by-issuer ≠ approval odds (which depend on income, credit profile, score). MVP must not pretend to predict approval, only flag rule trips. The "informational only" disclaimer line in STRATEGY.md §7 covers this if surfaced inline.
• Affiliate-bias optics: "Earliest apply date" sort touches affiliate revenue — must not reorder for revenue. Pin to the math-first rule in STRATEGY.md §6.3 and disclose the sort key on the catalog UI.

Next step

Promote to a weekly prototype — build the rule engine + /tools/velocity-check as a free-tier single-session calculator (no DB, no auth, no catalog sort) and validate the SEO + sharing hook before scoping the persistent vault as a LIF-### item.

Sources

• https://card-savvy.com/learn/chase-5-24-rule-explained-2026 — 2026 status of Chase 5/24; confirms Cap One business cards now count toward 5/24 and Chase retired the Sapphire 48-month rule in June 2025
• https://militarymoneymanual.com/credit-card-application-rules/ — 2026 cross-issuer rule summary used to scope the MVP rule pack (Chase 2/30, Citi 8/65 + 95, BoA 2/3/4 + 7/12, Cap One 1/6)
• https://frequentmiler.com/complete-guide-to-credit-card-application-rules-by-bank/ — authoritative cross-issuer catalog cited by r/churning and Doctor of Credit; baseline for the data/issuer_rules.json schema
• D:/AI_Agents/Repo/Mikes_Repos/life-hacker/docs/STRATEGY.md — OfferStack personas (Active Optimizer §2), freemium monetization (§5), trust positioning (§6.3), risks (§7)
• D:/AI_Agents/Repo/Mikes_Repos/life-hacker/docs/EXECUTION_BACKLOG.md — confirmed no open LIF-### item covers issuer velocity-rules; integration points are LIF-014/015 (Supabase + TanStack Query), LIF-023 (/wallet), LIF-031 (Next Best Actions), LIF-035 (calculator audit-detail pattern)