SKILL.md
Subscription Audit Skill
Subscriptions are priced monthly precisely so nobody computes them yearly — $15.99 is a sandwich; $191.88 is a decision. The audit is two passes: find them all (the hunt is the hard part — they hide across cards, app stores, PayPal, and annual charges that only surface one month a year) and annualize and rank them, at which point most of the leak turns out to live in the top three lines. This skill runs both passes and then the honest keep/cancel/downgrade sort — including the note that canceling is sometimes deliberately harder than subscribing, and how to do it anyway.
What This Skill Produces
- The annualized ranking — every recurring charge at its true yearly cost, from the script, with per-month and per-day totals
- The hunt checklist — the places subscriptions hide, worked through systematically
- The sort — keep (used, valued) / cancel (the honest list) / downgrade (the tier nobody remembers choosing) / negotiate (the ones that discount on cancel-intent)
- The re-audit cadence — because the leak refills
Required Inputs
Ask for these if not provided:
- The recurring lines — from bank/card statements (2–3 months back, plus one full year scan for annual charges); raw pasted statements are fine — extraction is part of the job
- The hunt surfaces — which cards, app-store subscriptions (both platforms), PayPal/payment-app recurring, anything on a partner's card that's really shared
- Honest usage — per service: when last actually used (the calendar answer, not the aspirational one — "I might get back into it" is the leak talking)
Programmatic Helper
python3 scripts/subscription_audit.py --sub "streaming-a:15.99:monthly" --sub "vpn:71.88:yearly" --sub "gym:45:monthly"
python3 scripts/subscription_audit.py --sub "news:4:weekly" --sub "cloud:2.99:monthly" --json
Deterministic. Cadences: weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly; output ranks by annualized cost and reports the top-three share — usually most of the leak.
Framework: The Audit Rules
- card statements (all cards) → app-store subscription pages (both ecosystems — the ones subscribed via app store don't show as merchant names you recognize) → PayPal/payment-app recurring lists → the annual-charge sweep (scan 12 months, not 2 — domains, memberships, and software renew yearly and hide 11 months at a time) → the free-trial calendar (what converts next month?).
