Turn four messy contractor bids into an apples-to-apples comparison with Claude
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- by burnto (Hacker News)
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Evidence: Described by posterThe person describes what happened in words, without screenshots or video.
Outcome
A Hacker News commenter had four home-repair bids with wildly different line items, costs, timelines, scopes and formats. Claude (Opus) turned them into an apples-to-apples comparison, filled gaps with reasonable inferences from the other bids, produced a PDF they printed to go through with their partner, and suggested key questions for follow-up calls. The commenter says it clearly showed the advantages of one of the bids.
Agent
Prompt Recreated prompt
The source didn't share its exact prompt, so we wrote this from what it describes.
Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to. Goal: Put these contractor bids side by side so I can compare them fairly and pick one. Fill in before running: - The bids (PDFs or photos): [BIDS] - The job and any must-haves: [JOB] - My budget and timing: [BUDGET AND DATES] You're not my accountant or financial adviser. Show your working, label estimates as estimates, and tell me which points a professional or the official source should confirm. Rules: - Map every line item into the same categories (materials, labour, permits, clean-up, warranty). - Where a bid leaves something out, mark it as missing and give an estimate based on the others, clearly labelled as an estimate. - Compare price, scope, timeline and warranty, and flag anything unusually high, low or vague. - List questions to ask each contractor before I decide. - Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify. Output: A comparison table, a short summary of each bid's strengths and gaps, and a question list per contractor, as a printable PDF. You'll know it worked when: I can choose a contractor knowing exactly what each price includes.
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Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to. Goal: Put these contractor bids side by side so I can compare them fairly and pick one. Fill in before running: - The bids (PDFs or photos): [BIDS] - The job and any must-haves: [JOB] - My budget and timing: [BUDGET AND DATES] You're not my accountant or financial adviser. Show your working, label estimates as estimates, and tell me which points a professional or the official source should confirm. Rules: - Map every line item into the same categories (materials, labour, permits, clean-up, warranty). - Where a bid leaves something out, mark it as missing and give an estimate based on the others, clearly labelled as an estimate. - Compare price, scope, timeline and warranty, and flag anything unusually high, low or vague. - List questions to ask each contractor before I decide. - Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify. Output: A comparison table, a short summary of each bid's strengths and gaps, and a question list per contractor, as a printable PDF. You'll know it worked when: I can choose a contractor knowing exactly what each price includes.
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Optional stronger version
Our rewrite with extra checks. The poster didn't test it.
Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to. Goal: Put these contractor bids side by side so I can compare them fairly and pick one. Fill in before running: - The bids (PDFs or photos): [BIDS] - The job and any must-haves: [JOB] - My budget and timing: [BUDGET AND DATES] You're not my accountant or financial adviser. Show your working, label estimates as estimates, and tell me which points a professional or the official source should confirm. Rules: - Map every line item into the same categories (materials, labour, permits, clean-up, warranty). - Where a bid leaves something out, mark it as missing and give an estimate based on the others, clearly labelled as an estimate. - Compare price, scope, timeline and warranty, and flag anything unusually high, low or vague. - List questions to ask each contractor before I decide. - Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify. - Never treat an estimated gap as the contractor's real price; tell me to get it confirmed in writing. Output: A comparison table, a short summary of each bid's strengths and gaps, and a question list per contractor, as a printable PDF. You'll know it worked when: I can choose a contractor knowing exactly what each price includes. Before you finish: re-read my goal and constraints, check your answer against each one, and list anything you assumed or couldn't confirm.
Source
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434979
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