Pricing Advisor (The Minimalist Entrepreneur Pricing Skill)
Applies The Minimalist Entrepreneur principles to help you price a product or service and stop agonizing over what to charge.
Pure advisory text skill: no scripts, no external calls, no sensitive data; minimal risk surface. Deducted for undeclared license metadata and attribution limited to a book adaptation.
Instructions are self-consistent and well structured, but static review only: no tests or abnormal-input handling evidence; static cap of 10 applies.
Triggers (setting/changing prices) are explicit in the description and output format is clear; deducted for missing capability boundaries, no Chinese support, and weak environment-fit evidence.
Readable docs with install notes and a skill table, but unknown license, no versioning/changelog, and no stated maintenance responsibility cap the score mid-range.
As a conversational advisory skill it can directly yield pricing model, initial price, tiers and break-even math with clear marginal value; no verified real output, so static cap of 7.
Cites Dan Ariely and Laura Roeder as second-hand viewpoints; no reproducible tests or third-party execution evidence, so below 5.
- License metadata is undeclared; confirm authorization before enterprise use.
- English-only content with no Chinese adaptation.
- Advice reflects The Minimalist Entrepreneur viewpoints, not a general pricing methodology; human review required for major decisions.
- Static review only; nothing was executed.
What does this skill do, and when should you use it?
This is the pricing skill from slavingia/skills, a ten-skill collection based on Sahil Lavingia's book The Minimalist Entrepreneur. It acts as a business advisor, explaining cost-based vs. value-based pricing, six principles such as the zero price effect, and asks you diagnostic questions (unit costs, competitor prices, profitability) to arrive at a starting price. Its output covers your pricing model, an initial price with rationale, a future tier structure, the customer count needed for financial independence, and when to raise prices. It is a pure advisory skill — no scripts, no file access, no external calls.
When asked about pricing, it consults in a conversational way using the book's framework: introduces cost-based and value-based pricing models with examples (retail markups, iTunes, Netflix); applies six principles including the zero price effect, free-trial expectations, and tiered pricing; gathers information through four questions (variable costs per customer, competing solutions' prices, the no-brainer price for your ideal customer, a price profitable from customer #1); helps compute monthly income needs, corresponding customer counts, and timelines at one new customer per business day (260/year); and outputs your pricing model, initial price and rationale, future tier structure, customers needed for financial independence, and when to revisit prices.
- An indie hacker finishing a first SaaS and unsure whether to charge $5 or $50/month
- A service provider who has been working free and wants to start charging without scaring off users
- A founder preparing a price increase and wanting a sanity check on timing
- A builder designing economy/business/first-class style pricing tiers for different customer segments
- Someone working out how many customers at a given price are needed to cover living costs and reach financial independence
- A creator weighing freemium or ad models and worried about switching to paid later
What are this skill's strengths and limitations?
- Clear methodology: two pricing models plus six principles drawn directly from a published book framework
- Gives concrete quantified paths, e.g. a $10/month product needing $2,000/month means 200 customers, under a year at one sale per business day
- Anchors the "charge at least $1" stance in behavioral economics (Dan Ariely's zero price effect), a useful corrective for free-leaning founders
- Zero dependencies, pure prompt — works in any Agent Skills-compatible environment as-is
- It's a fixed block of advice with no scripts or calculators — the financial math is done by the model, not verified by code
- Opinionated toward the book's philosophy (strongly anti-free, start-low-then-raise), which won't fit ad-supported or other business models
- Skips advanced topics like A/B price testing or regional pricing; depth is limited
- No license declared in the repo — verify terms before organizational use; no test suite or effectiveness evidence in the source
How do you install this skill?
In Claude Code, run: /plugin marketplace add slavingia/skills, then /plugin install minimalist-entrepreneur — this registers all 10 skills including pricing. Alternatively, clone the repo locally and add it via /plugin marketplace add <local path>. The README documents no way to install just this one skill, and the license is unstated.
How do you use this skill?
After installation, invoke /pricing in Claude Code, or simply describe your pricing question — the skill's description triggers it when someone is setting prices, considering changes, or unsure what to charge. Example prompt: "I built a monthly SaaS tool with about $3/hr of my time — help me calibrate pricing." The skill will first ask you four questions about costs and competitors, then produce a pricing model, initial price, tier suggestions, and customer-count math. No scripts or dependencies; everything happens in conversation.