subscription-auditor

Subscription Auditor Skill

Every card statement hides a museum of past enthusiasms billing monthly. This skill runs the audit an accountant would: inventory every recurring charge, price the waste annually (monthly numbers anesthetize), verdict each one — and stop exactly at the line where money moves. Cancellation is prepared, never performed.

What This Skill Produces

• The inventory — every recurring charge: service, amount, cadence, last-used evidence, renewal date
• The annual-waste number — the headline: what "unused + forgotten" costs per year
• Verdicts — keep / cancel / downgrade / share-a-seat, each with the one-line case
• Cancellation prep — per cancel-verdict: the how (portal path, email draft, phone script), the deadline before next billing, retention-offer guidance

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The data — statement exports (CSV/PDF), a receipts-email folder, or app-store subscription pages the agent can read
• Usage signals — the user's honest read on what they still use; where available, last-login evidence
• Household scope — just theirs, or family plans and duplicates across the household
• The keep-regardless list — subscriptions that are load-bearing whatever the numbers say

Framework

1. Recurrence detection: same merchant at regular intervals ± a few days; catch the annuals (the expensive ambush) by scanning 13 months back, not 3.
2. Annualize everything: $12.99/mo reads as harmless; $156/yr across nine services reads as a holiday. Always print both.
3. The evidence bar for "cancel": no usage signal + no user-claimed use + not on the keep list. One signal short → verdict is "confirm", not "cancel".
4. Duplicates & overlaps: two streaming services with the same catalog niche, storage plans on three clouds, the family paying twice — the overlap table is often the biggest line.
5. Trial-trap scan: anything that started as a trial in the last 90 days gets its renewal date bolded.

Output Format

Subscription Audit: [scope] — [date]

The number: $[n]/year in cancel-verdict subscriptions.

| Service | $/mo | $/yr | Last used | Renewal | Verdict | Case |

|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

Overlaps found: … · Trial traps: …

Cancellation prep (per cancel): the path · the deadline · the draft.

Quality Checks

• [ ] 13 months scanned — annuals caught
• [ ] Every verdict cites its evidence; "confirm" used where evidence is one signal short
• [ ] Both monthly and annual figures printed for every line
• [ ] Cancellation prep includes the before-next-billing deadline per service
• [ ] Money-moving actions: prepared only, per the Execution gate

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not cancel-verdict on price alone — an expensive daily tool is the best line on the statement
• [ ] Do not miss the family dimension — half of subscription waste is duplication between people
• [ ] Do not present retention offers as wins by default — a 40% discount on an unused service is 60% waste
• [ ] Do not touch anything financial without the gate below — this skill's authority ends at preparation

Execution

For tool-using agents with statement/inbox read access and (optionally) browser control. Without tools, run on user-pasted statements. Rules per [SKILLSPEC.md §5](../../SKILLSPEC.md).

Preconditions

• The inventory + verdicts reviewed and explicitly approved by a human, service by service.
• Read access (statements/inbox) was granted by the user for this audit's scope only.
• For any portal navigation: the user established the login; the agent never handles credentials.

Allowed actions

• Read the named statement exports / receipt folders to build the inventory.
• Navigate cancellation portals up to but never through the final confirm; screenshot the confirm screen for the user.
• Draft (never send) cancellation emails; prepare phone scripts.
• Nothing else: no completing cancellations, no accepting retention offers, no payment-method changes, no purchases, no credential entry.

Verification

• Per prepared cancellation: the confirm-screen screenshot + the renewal deadline it must beat.
• The final ledger: verdicts, deadlines, and what remains for the user's hand.

Rollback

• Preparation has nothing to roll back — that's the point of the gate.
• Stop and ask a human if: a portal demands identity verification, a retention offer changes the economics, or any page requests payment or credentials.