# Pricing strategy Human Guide

## What This Is For
Guide users through defining their pricing strategy for an AI product or SaaS. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for go-to-market work: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Pricing strategy agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for pricing strategy.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Pricing strategy guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- **Consumers / SMBs**: tend to prefer prepaid, transparent pricing. Invoice billing creates friction.
- **Enterprise**: often require invoices, procurement approval, and post-paid billing. Real-time prepaid wallets may not fit procurement workflows.
- **Predictable / flat usage**: subscriptions make sense; a flat fee covers costs with margin.
- **Highly variable**: usage-based billing aligns cost and revenue; flat pricing creates margin risk.
- **If yes**: ask what they use it for and whether they want to consolidate everything in Credyt or keep their existing PSP.
- **If they want to consolidate**: Credyt handles the full stack — recurring subscriptions, entitlements, and real-time usage billing in a single product configuration. No need to keep Stripe around.
- **If no**: Credyt handles everything — subscriptions, credit entitlements, and real-time usage billing in one place.
- **Real currency**: transparent, simple, works well for developer tools and per-call APIs.
- **Custom currency**: decouples pricing from costs (easier to adjust margins later), allows bonuses/promotions, familiar for consumer products.
- Recurring fixed-fee subscriptions
- Credit entitlements bundled into subscriptions
- Real-time usage billing (prepaid wallet, instant debit per event)

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: What does your product do?, Who are your customers?, What activities cost you money?, How predictable is usage?, Which billing model fits?, 5b. Subscription tier pricing, Real-time billing or invoice-based?, Existing payment provider?, Pricing currency, Does pricing vary?.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- This is the most important infrastructure decision.
- They explicitly do not want to consolidate into Credyt

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Pricing strategy human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the credyt/ai-tools skill entry for `pricing-strategy`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Pricing Strategy

Help the user define their pricing strategy through a structured conversation. Ask questions **one at a time** — wait for each answer before asking the next. Adapt follow-up questions based on what they tell you.

**Render each question as a standalone UI element where supported** (e.g. a choice selector, short text input, or multi-select). In plain text, ask them sequentially.

Work through these topics in order. Skip or combine naturally if answers make earlier questions redundant.

## 1. What does your product do?

> "Tell me about your product — what does it do, and what do your users get value from?"

Ground all follow-up questions in their specific product and customer journey.

## 2. Who are your customers?

> "Are your customers primarily individuals/consumers, small businesses, or enterprise teams?"

This affects which billing model fits:
- **Consumers / SMBs**: tend to prefer prepaid, transparent pricing. Invoice billing creates friction.
- **Enterprise**: often require invoices, procurement approval, and post-paid billing. Real-time prepaid wallets may not fit procurement workflows.

## 3. What activities cost you money?

> "Which parts of your product have a direct cost per use? For example: AI model calls, video rendering, storage, emails sent?"

List what they identify. These are the candidate billable activities.

## 4. How predictable is usage?

> "Does usage vary widely between customers, or is it roughly similar month to month?"

- **Predictable / flat usage**: subscriptions make sense; a flat fee covers costs with margin.
- **Highly variable**: usage-based billing aligns cost and revenue; flat pricing creates margin risk.

## 5. Which billing model fits?

> "How do you want to charge? Here are the three main approaches:"
>
> - **Pay-as-you-go**: customers prepay a balance; each activity deducts in real time. No monthly commitment. Best for variable usage, developer-facing products, or when customers should control their spend.
> - **Subscription**: flat monthly/annual fee regardless of usage. Best for predictable usage, B2B, or when you're still figuring out unit economics.
> - **Hybrid**: monthly fee that includes a usage allowance; extra usage costs more. Best for B2B SaaS with usage spikes, or transitioning from flat to usage-based. Examples: Cursor, Clay, GitHub Copilot.

Ask which resonates, or whether they're unsure and want to explore further.

## 5b. Subscription tier pricing

If they chose a subscription or hybrid model, follow up:

> "What are your subscription tiers and monthly prices? For example, Starter at $29/month, Pro at $79/month, Agency at $199/month. If you haven't settled on prices yet, rough estimates are fine — we can refine later."

For hybrid models, also ask:

> "How many credits (or usage units) does each tier include? For example, Starter includes 20 job posts, Pro includes 75."

Capture both the fee and the included allowance per tier — these feed directly into the MRR projection and Credyt product configuration.

## 6. Real-time billing or invoice-based?

This is the most important infrastructure decision.

> "When a customer uses your product, should they be charged immediately (real-time), or billed at the end of the month via invoice?"

Explain the trade-off:

| | Real-time (prepaid) | Invoice-based (post-paid) |
|---|---|---|
| **How it works** | Balance deducted per event, instantly | Usage accrues; invoice sent at period end |
| **Cost control** | Customer controls spend; service pauses if balance runs out | You carry the risk of unpaid usage |
| **Best for** | Consumer, developer, SMB | Enterprise, procurement-driven B2B |
| **Fraud/abuse risk** | Low — prepaid means no credit risk | Higher — customers may dispute or not pay |

> "Most AI products doing per-token or per-call billing use real-time billing. Most B2B SaaS with monthly seats use invoice billing. Which fits your situation better?"

If they have enterprise customers requiring invoices, note that hybrid is possible: invoice for the subscription, real-time for overage.

## 7. Existing payment provider?

> "Are you already using a payment provider like Stripe, Paddle, or PayPal?"