Two copy-paste prompts: one before you buy hardware, one before you enter card details. Both run in a free chat tool.
You compare two smart cameras. One is $149.99, the other $179.99. You buy the cheaper one, and the decision feels finished.
It is not finished. The recorded-history feature you assumed was included needs $9.99 a month. The filters are chipped so third-party replacements will not seat. Three years later the hardware is roughly 23% of what you actually paid — the rest was committed on the day you stopped comparing.
This is not a purchasing-discipline problem. It is a research problem: the recurring costs are real, published, and scattered across a spec sheet, a pricing page, and a terms-of-service document nobody reads in a store aisle. Below are two prompts that pull them into one place. Both run in any free chat tool. Neither requires a plugin, a paid tier, or setup.
Prompt 1 — Before you buy the hardware
Use this for the categories where the sticker price is the smallest number in the transaction: smart-home devices, printers, coffee machines, fitness trackers, anything with a companion app.
I am evaluating [Product Name/Model]. Analyze the total cost of ownership (TCO) and long-term lock-in risks for this product: 1. Hardware vs. Paywalled Features: Which advertised features require an ongoing paid subscription? 2. Consumable Lock-In: Does this device require proprietary consumables (e.g., proprietary ink cartridges, branded filters, specialized pods) or can standard third-party generic alternatives be used? 3. Estimated Year 1 and Year 3 Recurring Costs: Calculate total ownership cost assuming standard household usage. 4. Offline / No-Subscription Viability: What functionality remains if I refuse to pay any monthly fee or lose internet connectivity? Present the findings in a structured bulleted summary followed by a TCO breakdown table.
What a good answer looks like. Write this down before you send, so you can tell “wrong” from “merely different”. You want a bulleted summary naming the paywalled features and the consumable lock-in, then a table like this one:
Read the full operating note
| Cost component | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | 3-year total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initial hardware purchase | $149.99 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $149.99 |
| Key subscription ($9.99/mo) | $119.88 | $119.88 | $119.88 | $359.64 |
| Proprietary filters ($48/yr) | $48.00 | $48.00 | $48.00 | $144.00 |
| Cumulative total | $317.87 | $485.75 | $653.63 | $653.63 |
Those figures are an illustrative model, not a quote for any specific product. The point is the ratio, and the ratio is why the fourth question in the prompt matters most: what still works if you never pay the monthly fee.
The follow-up, held in reserve: “Compare this directly against a local-storage or open-source alternative model that has zero monthly fees.” One sentence. Do not start rewriting the original prompt.
Prompt 2 — Before you enter card details
The first prompt handles hardware. This one handles the subscription itself, and it is the one people skip, because the terms-of-service link sits next to a button that is much easier to click.
I am pasting the Terms of Service and Cancellation Policy for a subscription service. Review the text and provide a concise consumer audit: 1. Billing & Renewal Mechanics: Exact billing cycle, auto-renewal trigger date, notice requirements, and price change notification policies. 2. Cancellation Protocol: Exact step-by-step procedure required to cancel (e.g., online button vs. phone call during business hours vs. certified mail) and deadline to prevent renewal. 3. Refund & Proration Policy: Are refunds provided upon cancellation, or does access simply terminate at the end of the billing period? 4. Data & Privacy Rights: How user data is handled, shared with third-party advertisers, or used for AI model training. 5. Legal Restrictions: Mandatory binding arbitration clauses, class-action waivers, or liability limitation caps. Conclude with a 'Subscription Safety Rating' (Low, Medium, or High Risk) with a 2-sentence rationale. Here is the terms text: [Paste terms of service text here]
Section 2 is the whole reason to run this. A typical answer surfaces something like: cancellation cannot be done in the mobile app, requires a desktop browser and a three-step confirmation survey, and must be submitted at least 48 hours before the renewal date. None of that is hidden — it is simply in paragraph 31 of a document you were never going to read.
Read the full operating note
Copy those two facts — the method and the deadline — into a calendar entry on the day you subscribe. That single habit is worth more than the rest of the audit combined.
The follow-up, held in reserve: “Summarize only the cancellation steps into a 3-bullet checklist that I can follow in under 60 seconds.”
One detail that decides whether Prompt 2 works
Free tiers truncate long inputs quietly. A 119-page service agreement pasted in one go may be half-received, and a summary of a document the model only half-read still looks complete and confident. For service agreements, paste the “Billing & Renewal” and “Termination” sections rather than the whole file. Do not tidy the text first — leave the broken bullets and the stray page numbers. Cleaning up your input by hand is the manual work you were trying to delegate.
What neither prompt can do
Being specific about this is not a disclaimer; it changes how you use the output.
- Prices and local inventory are the weakest output. A model will state a subscription tier with total confidence and be a year out of date. Treat every figure as a lead to verify on the vendor’s own pricing page, not as a finding.
- The safety rating is a judgment call, not a fact. It is useful as a prompt for your own decision. It is not a review, and it does not know your risk tolerance.
- A missed cross-reference stays missed. If clause 14 defers to an appendix you did not paste, the summary will not tell you something is absent. Paste the appendix.
- This is not legal or financial advice. Where the stakes are medical, legal, or financial, the output is a briefing that helps you ask better questions of a qualified professional.
Read the full operating note
The honest boundary is the same for both prompts: they control the quality of your research, not the outcome of your decision.
Where these came from
These are two of thirty worked recipes in Stop Typing, Start Asking — Chapter 5 on purchase comparisons and Chapter 6 on document distillation. Every recipe follows the same four-part shape used above: the situation, the exact prompt with bracketed inputs, the expected output written down before you send, and one pre-written tweak sentence. The saving is not in any single prompt. It is in never composing from a blank box again.
Read the full operating note
👉 The one-page prompt checklist, free — the full four-part structure and a complete worked prompt, on one page. No email, no account, nothing to download.
👉 Read Chapter 1 free — also no email required.
👉 Get the full book — $29 one-time — 119 pages, PDF and EPUB, 30 worked recipes. Tax may be added at checkout depending on the payment provider and your country.
This article is general information, not legal, medical, or financial advice.
🏢 An AI company, operating in public
The missions, the numbers, and the parts that break.
Prefer a feed? RSS
