home-contractor-quote-decoder
GitHub解析房屋装修或维修报价单，识别隐性成本、 allowances 陷阱及排除项。通过逐项解码、许可审计、变更订单映射和付款风险审查，将不可比报价转化为可比问题集，辅助用户判断合同公平性并发现潜在风险。
Trigger Scenarios
Install
npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill home-contractor-quote-decoder -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "home-contractor-quote-decoder",
"description": "Decode a home renovation or repair quote — allowances that aren't prices, exclusions that become change orders, payment schedules that shift risk, and what a comparable-bids check should cover. Use when someone asks 'is this contractor quote fair', 'decode this renovation bid', 'what should be in a contractor contract', or 'why do these three bids differ so much'. Produces a section-by-section decode, the allowance and exclusion audit, payment-schedule risk analysis, and the questions that make bids comparable."
}
Home Contractor Quote Decoder Skill
The most expensive number in a renovation quote is usually one that isn't there: the allowance that runs out, the exclusion that becomes a change order, the "TBD" that becomes time-and-materials. This skill decodes the quote the way a construction manager reads a bid — hunting the gaps between what's written and what the finished job requires — and turns three incomparable bids into one comparable question set. It reads documents; it doesn't judge workmanship.
What This Skill Produces
- A section-by-section decode: scope, materials, allowances, exclusions, schedule, payment terms
- The allowance audit — every allowance vs. what that item realistically requires, flagged where it's a teaser
- The exclusion-to-change-order map: what's not in this price that the finished job will need
- Payment-schedule risk read, and the question set that makes competing bids comparable
Required Inputs
Ask for these only if they aren't already provided:
- The quote/contract text — full document preferred; decode what's provided and name the missing sections (a one-page quote for a $60k job is itself a finding).
- The project as the homeowner understands it — what "done" looks like to them; the decode hunts the gap between their "done" and the document's.
- Competing bids if any — the decode aligns them line by line.
- Jurisdictional context if known — permits and lien rules vary; flagged, not asserted.
Framework: Severity Scale
- 🔴 Resolve before signing — allowances materially below what the selected-grade item costs (a $2,000 cabinet allowance in a kitchen remodel is a placeholder wearing a price), scope described by outcome without specification ("renovate bathroom" vs. itemized work), exclusions of things the job obviously requires (disposal, permits, patching, paint), front-loaded payment schedules (large deposit + payments ahead of completed work — where jurisdiction caps deposits, flag it as verify-locally), no change-order process in writing, "contractor not responsible for" lists covering the likeliest damage, no lien-waiver provision on jobs with subs.
- 🟡 Clarify — the comparability killers — materials by allowance in one bid and by specification in another (why bid A "costs less"), timeline without milestones or a start-window commitment, warranty terms undefined (labor vs. materials, duration), cleanup/protection unstated, who pulls permits (the answer "you do" shifts liability — flag it).
- 🟢 Standard — itemized scope, realistic allowances tied to named grades, progress payments tied to completed milestones, written change-order pricing; label a good quote as good.
The core move is the finished-job reconciliation: list what the completed project requires end to end, then find each item in the quote — priced, allowanced, excluded, or silent. Silent items are the future change orders; price the gap.
Output Format
Contractor Quote Decode: [project — contractor, amount]
1. The verdict — the real expected cost range (quote + likely allowance overages + silent items), in three sentences.
2. Section decode
| Section | What it says | What it means / what's missing | Severity |
|---|
3. The allowance audit — each allowance vs. realistic cost at the homeowner's stated grade; the overage subtotal.
4. The silent-items list — required by the finished job, absent from the document; each one a future change order.
5. Payment schedule read — money vs. completed work over time; where the homeowner is exposed; the milestone-tied restructure to request.
6. Making bids comparable — the question set to send every bidder so the numbers finally mean the same thing.
End the artifact with, verbatim: "This is a plain-language reading, not legal/financial advice — laws vary by jurisdiction; confirm anything load-bearing with a qualified professional."
Quality Checks
- Every allowance is audited against the homeowner's stated grade, with the overage totaled
- The finished-job reconciliation produces an explicit silent-items list
- Payment-schedule exposure is shown as money-ahead-of-work over time
- Jurisdiction-dependent items (deposit caps, permits, liens) are flagged verify-locally
- Bid comparisons align scope first, price second
- The disclaimer line appears verbatim in the artifact
Anti-Patterns
- Do not judge the contractor's quality or honesty — decode the document; references and licensing checks are separate homework (name them)
- Do not treat the lowest bid as the best or the worst — un-specified scope explains most bid gaps; make it comparable first
- Do not invent local costs or code requirements — ranges to verify, not facts
- Do not soften the allowance finding — a teaser allowance is the oldest trick in the bid
- Do not let "we'll figure it out as we go" stand anywhere money is involved — that sentence is a time-and-materials contract in disguise
Based On
Owner-side bid review practice — finished-job reconciliation, allowance auditing, payment-risk sequencing, bid leveling.
Version History
- 54fad50 Current 2026-07-19 13:29
