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Decision skill · FreeProduct Loop

How to read an agency proposal and quote

How do you read a dev-agency proposal — and compare two quotes that look nothing alike?

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Version 1.0 · Plain text · No email required · CC BY-SA 4.0

What this skill does

Hand this file to Claude or ChatGPT. The assistant interviews you, one question at a time, through this decision's determining questions — on your specifics. It then applies the decision rules to your answers and gives you the recommendation plainly, with the conditions under which it would change.

The decision it executes
How to read an agency proposal and quote →

What the sections of a dev proposal actually mean, the line items that hide the real price, and a normalization method that makes wildly different quotes comparable.

The guide is the canonical version: determining questions, paths with dated costs, what I'd do, and limits. It belongs to The Product Loop.

Escalation clause
An honest tool knows its edges.

This decision stops being self-serve — and needs a human with scars in the room — when:

  • The contract value is above roughly ₹50 lakh ($60,000) — legal review of the contract and an independent technical review of the scope are both mandatory at that size.
  • The deal includes equity, a revenue share, or any IP ownership claim by the agency — that is a different negotiation and needs professional advice before the founder responds at all.
  • The agency will not answer scope, exclusion, or rate questions in writing — treat that behavior as the finding.
  • The proposal is from a solo freelancer — different document, different risks; this walkthrough does not fit it.
When this skill revises
Optional. The download never depends on it.

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