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🧱 Cost a Project Before You Commit

Build the calculator you keep rebuilding in a spreadsheet, then put it on a link anyone can use. These prompts turn a formula into a working app: clean inputs, a result people trust, a saved record of every calculation, and an assistant that explains what the number means. Useful on your own desk, and useful in public as the page that brings people to you.
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Cost a Project Before You Commit

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I quote projects and only find out afterwards whether they made money. Build me a project cost calculator. For each project let me add labor lines with a role, an hourly rate and hours, material lines with quantity and unit cost, and subcontractor or expense lines. Apply an overhead percentage that I set to reflect the cost of simply being in business, and a contingency percentage I choose per project based on how risky it is. Show total cost, the price I intend to charge, the gross margin in money and percent, and what the margin would be if the project overran by ten or twenty percent. Record actual costs as they happen so estimated and actual can be compared at the end. Add an AI agent that compares a new estimate against my completed projects of a similar type and tells me whether my hours and contingency look realistic. Automate a scheduled weekly report on live projects trending over budget. Two logins: a project manager who builds estimates, and an owner who sets rates and overhead.

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01 / Spark - intelligence awakens

Cost a Project Before You Commit

Cost a project across people, materials, overhead, and contingency, and compare true cost against the price you are charging.

// the spark catches · intelligence awakens · the answer unfolds

Projects are usually costed on the obvious parts and lost on the rest. This adds the hours, the materials, the overhead, and a contingency you decide rather than discover.

What's Included

  • People, materials, and overhead each costed as their own lines.
  • A contingency you choose instead of one you find out about later.
  • Cost against price so the margin is visible before you agree.
  • An assistant that compares this to what similar projects really cost.

How To Use

  1. Cost your own time. A project that ignores it is not profitable, it is unpaid.
  2. Add overhead as a percentage. It is real even when it is invisible.
  3. Set contingency deliberately by risk, not by habit.
  4. Compare final actual cost against the estimate every single time.

Turn it into a price with quote prompts, and run the delivery through project management prompts.

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