Do not ask an agent for a price. Ask it for the inputs: what a buyer actually gets, what they use today instead, and what the cheapest version that still solves the problem would be. The price is a judgement; those three are research.
The prompt
Do not give me a price. Instead: describe what a buyer actually gets from this in one sentence, list what they most likely use today instead and what that costs them in money or hours, and describe the cheapest version of this that would still solve the problem. Then I will decide.
| When to use it | Before you put a number on anything, and again whenever a price stops feeling right. |
|---|---|
| Why it is worded that way | Asked directly, a model produces a plausible number with nothing behind it, and a plausible number is the most dangerous kind because it feels researched. Withholding the question and asking for the inputs instead gives you the three things that actually determine a price: the value, the alternative, and the floor. |
The alternative is the real anchor
Nobody compares your price to your costs. They compare it to what they do today — a spreadsheet, an afternoon, a subscription they already have. That comparison is the price ceiling, and it is knowable.
The cheapest version tells you what to cut
Describing the smallest thing that still solves the problem usually reveals that half of what you built is not what you are selling. That is useful before you write the sales page, and painful afterwards.
One sentence, or it is not ready
If what a buyer gets cannot be said in one sentence, the product is not the problem — the positioning is. Fix that before the price, because no number rescues an unclear offer.
The Operator Prompt Pack
This is one of 60 prompts, from the phase "Sell what you built". The pack has the rest, each with the same reasoning underneath, plus the research they are built on and a house-rules file you paste in once.
Tools this applies to
| Tool | What it does | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Payments and subscriptions. The standard, and integrating it is a matter of asking. | Free, percentage per sale |
| Vercel | Hosting. Puts a project live on a real address with one command. | Free tier |
| GitHub | Version control. Your restore point when an hour of building goes wrong. | Free |
Every tool has its own page with what it costs and who should skip it. Some links are affiliate links.
More prompts like this
The prompt that makes an agent document what it built
How do you get an AI agent to write documentation for the code it just produced?
The prompt for adding payments safely
How do you add payments to an app without handling card details yourself?