Methodology · Last updated 14:46 UTC

How we verify every code on this site.

A multi-agent verification pipeline that combines AI cross-checks, an automated cart simulator at checkout, a human editorial team, and live community signal — running every 24 hours across 4712 stores.

The pipeline

Four stages, four agents, one loop.

Every code passes through four discrete stages. Each stage is owned by a specific agent — AI, automation, editorial, or community — and writes a structured log entry that becomes part of the code's verification history.

01

Source

AI Discovery Agent

Scans merchant promo pages, affiliate feeds, partner APIs, and sitemap diffs every 15 minutes. Classifies discovered codes by likely structure (% off, $ off, BOGO, free-ship).

02

Test

Cart Simulator + AI Check

Headless browser adds a qualifying item, applies the code, captures the actual discount. AI cross-checks the result against merchant's published terms (exclusions, geo, plan).

03

Publish

AI Editor + Human Reviewer

AI generates the title, description, and meta from the test transcript. A human editor reviews everything tagged "editor's pick" before publish. Auto-approve threshold: 96% AI confidence.

04

Re-verify

AI Watcher + Community

AI watches merchant pages for changes (price, terms, expiry). Re-runs the full test on every detected change AND on a 24h cadence regardless. User votes feed the same scoring loop.

Inside the engine

Three AI subsystems power the verification stack.

None of them are general-purpose chatbots. Each is a narrow agent fine-tuned for one job — and the orchestrator routes work between them.

Subsystem 01

Discovery

Discovery Agent

Crawls merchant promo pages and affiliate feeds. Reads HTML, ad copy, footer banners, and email-subscription confirmations. Classifies any candidate code by likely structure before passing it downstream.

Model
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Throughput
~620 pages / min
Inputs
HTML, sitemap diffs, RSS
Outputs
Candidate code + structural class
Subsystem 02

Verification

Cross-Check Agent

Reads merchant terms-of-service, exclusion language, and category restrictions. Validates that the discount returned by the cart simulator matches the merchant's stated promotion — and flags partial successes.

Model
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Latency
~1.4s p50
Inputs
Cart transcript + ToS
Outputs
Pass / partial / fail + reason
Subsystem 03

Editorial

Editorial Agent

Rewrites the title, description, and FAQ block for each verified code. Tuned for clarity over copy — describes who the code is for, where it applies, and what limits to expect at checkout.

Model
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Output
Title, desc, 3-5 FAQs
Style guide
~14 pages, versioned
Human review
Below 96% confidence
The human layer

Where 14 editors fit into the loop.

AI does most of the discovery and verification work. Humans own the judgment calls — editorial picks, edge-case re-checks, exclusion notes, and the standards every agent is held to.

Editor's picks

The single highest-value code per store is manually re-tested and curated. These show up on the store hero with the lime "★ Editor's pick" tag.

Failed AI verification

When AI cross-check confidence drops below 96%, the code is queued for human review before publish. About 8% of new codes pass through this path daily.

Edge-case redemption

Codes that need unusual checkout flows (call-to-redeem, mail-in, app-only) are flagged by the cart simulator and routed to an editor for documentation.

Standards & style

The Editorial Agent runs against a 14-page versioned style guide written and maintained by the editorial team. AI doesn't drift; we update the guide.

Show your work

A real verification log, in real time.

What follows is the structured log written when a code passes through the pipeline. Every code on the site has one of these — viewable on the code's detail view.

SAVE60 · norton · verification trace 9 events · 14:46 UTC
14:46:04 discovery scrape norton.com/promo
14:46:05 discovery found SAVE60 (new)
14:46:06 ai-check parse code structure → valid
14:46:07 cart-sim add Norton 360 Deluxe → cart
14:46:09 cart-sim apply SAVE60 → discount $83.99 → $33.99 (60%)
14:46:09 cart-sim verify matches advertised 60% ✓
14:46:10 ai-rewrite title "60% off Norton 360 Deluxe (first year)"
14:46:11 publish live /norton/save60
14:46:12 ai-watch monitor next re-test scheduled in 24h
Status: published & monitored Next re-test: in 24h
Quality metrics · last 24h

The numbers the editorial team watches.

Aggregate success rate 92% across 12847 verifications today
Avg code lifespan 23 days from first verification to expiry
Categories covered 9 4712 stores tracked
Human review rate 8% of new codes hit the editor queue
Under the hood

The stack that runs this.

We're a small infrastructure: a single Hetzner box in Ashburn, Virginia, a SQLite database with daily snapshots, a cron scheduler, and a pool of headless browsers. The architecture choice is deliberate — small, observable, and cheap to operate at the scale we need.

Verification Playwright (headless Chromium) Cart simulator. CAPTCHA-resistant. ~3.2s p50 / code.
AI agents Anthropic Claude · Google Gemini Discovery, Cross-Check, Editorial. Routed by task.
Storage SQLite + WAL · Daily B2 snapshot Single-file DB. 48MB at this writing. Restorable in seconds.
Orchestration Node + systemd timers 15-min discovery, 24h re-verify, on-demand for editor pushes.
Delivery Fastify + Nunjucks · Nginx Server-rendered HTML. No JS framework. Cached at the edge.
Observability Per-code structured logs Every verification writes a log; logs surface on each code page.
Our commitment

If a code doesn't work, we'd rather not show it.

That's the only rule. The pipeline, the agents, the editors, the metrics — all of it serves that one principle. Coupons are supposed to save you money; a coupon that doesn't work wastes your time. We took the category seriously enough to build the system above.