Agent skill

Cost Estimator

by alirezarezvani in alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team

Infrastructure and development cost estimation for technical projects.

MITAuto-check passedDatabases

Install Cost Estimator

skills CLI
$ npx skills add alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team --skill cost-estimator -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team cost-estimator --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/cost-estimator .claude/skills/cost-estimator && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
cost-estimator
GitHub stars
117
Token cost
~3k tokens
SKILL.md length
653 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
12
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Infrastructure and development cost estimation for technical projects.

  • Planning budgets
  • SKILL.md covers When to Use, Cost Categories, Infrastructure Cost Reference and Development Cost Estimation, plus 6 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md
  • Evaluating build vs buy decisions

What it does

Cost Estimator is an agent skill from alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team. Infrastructure and development cost estimation for technical projects. Use when planning budgets, evaluating build vs buy decisions, or projecting TCO for architecture choices.

Its SKILL.md is about 3k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Databases. The repository describes itself as: Your personal CTO Team for Claude Code . These Subagents will help you challenging yourself while you plan and execute. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Planning budgets
  • Evaluating build vs buy decisions
  • Projecting TCO for architecture choices

Example prompts

  • “/cost-estimator”

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit a5bbb78. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are markdown).

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Cost Estimator loads about 3k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 48 tokens; SKILL.md has 653 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~48
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~3k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team at commit a5bbb78, republished under its MIT licence (© alirezarezvani). 653 words, ~3,014 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/cost-estimator/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
cost-estimator
description
Infrastructure and development cost estimation for technical projects. Use when planning budgets, evaluating build vs buy decisions, or projecting TCO for architecture choices.

Cost Estimator

Provides frameworks for estimating infrastructure costs, development effort, and total cost of ownership (TCO) for technical projects.

When to Use

  • Planning infrastructure budgets
  • Evaluating build vs. buy decisions
  • Projecting costs at different scale points
  • Comparing technology options by cost
  • Creating business cases for technical investments

Cost Categories

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
TCO = Infrastructure + Development + Operations + Opportunity Cost

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP                       │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                                  │
│  Infrastructure    Development    Operations    Opportunity      │
│  ────────────────  ────────────   ──────────    ────────────     │
│  • Compute         • Engineering  • Support     • What else      │
│  • Storage         • QA           • Monitoring  • could team     │
│  • Network         • DevOps       • On-call     • be building?   │
│  • Third-party     • Management   • Training                     │
│    APIs/SaaS       • Contractors  • Incidents                    │
│                                                                  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Infrastructure Cost Reference

Cloud Compute Pricing (2024-2025)
AWS EC2 On-Demand (US regions)
InstancevCPURAMMonthly CostBest For
t3.micro21GB$8Dev/test
t3.medium24GB$30Small apps
t3.large28GB$60Light production
m6i.large28GB$70General production
m6i.xlarge416GB$140Medium workloads
m6i.2xlarge832GB$280Heavy workloads
c6i.2xlarge816GB$250CPU-intensive
r6i.2xlarge864GB$370Memory-intensive
GPU Instances
InstanceGPUVRAMMonthly CostBest For
g4dn.xlargeT416GB$380Inference
g5.xlargeA10G24GB$730ML training/inference
p4d.24xlarge8x A100320GB$23,000Large model training
Savings Options
PlanSavingsCommitment
On-Demand0%None
Reserved (1yr)30-40%1 year
Reserved (3yr)50-60%3 years
Spot Instances60-90%Can be interrupted
Database Pricing
Managed Database (AWS RDS PostgreSQL)
InstancevCPURAMMonthly CostConnections
db.t3.micro21GB$1550
db.t3.medium24GB$50100
db.m6g.large28GB$120200
db.m6g.xlarge416GB$240400
db.r6g.xlarge432GB$350500
db.r6g.2xlarge864GB$7001000

Add for storage: $0.115/GB/month (gp3) Add for IOPS: $0.02/IOPS/month (over 3000 baseline)

Redis/ElastiCache
Node TypeRAMMonthly Cost
cache.t3.micro0.5GB$12
cache.t3.medium3GB$50
cache.m6g.large6.4GB$100
cache.r6g.large13GB$175
Storage Pricing
ServiceCostUse Case
S3 Standard$0.023/GBFrequently accessed
S3 Infrequent$0.0125/GBBackups, archives
S3 Glacier$0.004/GBLong-term archive
EBS gp3$0.08/GBBlock storage
EBS io2$0.125/GB + IOPSHigh performance
Network Costs (Often Overlooked!)
Traffic TypeCost
Data INFree
Data OUT (first 10TB)$0.09/GB
Data OUT (next 40TB)$0.085/GB
Inter-AZ transfer$0.01/GB each way
Inter-region transfer$0.02/GB
CloudFront to internet$0.085/GB

Development Cost Estimation

Engineering Cost Framework
Development Cost = (Hours × Hourly Rate) × Complexity Factor × Risk Buffer

Hourly Rate (Fully Loaded):
- Junior Engineer: $75-100/hr
- Mid-level Engineer: $100-150/hr
- Senior Engineer: $150-200/hr
- Staff/Principal: $200-300/hr

Complexity Factors:
- Greenfield, known tech: 1.0x
- Existing codebase, known tech: 1.2x
- New technology for team: 1.5x
- Complex integrations: 1.3x
- Regulatory/compliance: 1.4x

Risk Buffer:
- Well-defined requirements: 1.2x
- Ambiguous requirements: 1.5x
- Experimental/R&D: 2.0x
Story Point to Cost Mapping
SizeStory PointsHoursCost (Mid-level)
XS12-4$200-400
S24-8$400-800
M38-16$800-1,600
L516-32$1,600-3,200
XL832-64$3,200-6,400
XXL13+64+$6,400+
Team Cost Calculator
markdown
## Monthly Team Cost

Engineering Team:
- 2 Senior Engineers × $15,000 = $30,000
- 3 Mid-level Engineers × $10,000 = $30,000
- 1 Engineering Manager × $18,000 = $18,000

Overhead (benefits, tools, etc.): 30%
Monthly Burn: ($78,000) × 1.3 = $101,400

Annual Team Cost: ~$1.2M

Build vs. Buy Analysis

Decision Framework
Build vs Buy Decision Matrix:

                    LOW Differentiation    HIGH Differentiation
                   ┌────────────────────┬────────────────────┐
    HIGH Volume/   │                    │                    │
    Usage          │     Consider       │       BUILD        │
                   │      Build         │    (competitive    │
                   │   (cost savings)   │     advantage)     │
                   ├────────────────────┼────────────────────┤
    LOW Volume/    │                    │                    │
    Usage          │       BUY          │       BUY          │
                   │   (no question)    │  (then consider    │
                   │                    │   build if scales) │
                   └────────────────────┴────────────────────┘
TCO Comparison Template
markdown
## Option A: Build Custom Solution

### Initial Development
- Engineering time: X months × $Y/month = $Z
- Infrastructure setup: $A

### Ongoing Costs (Annual)
- Infrastructure: $B
- Maintenance (20% of dev time): $C
- On-call/support: $D

### 3-Year TCO
Year 1: $Z + $A + $B + $C + $D
Year 2: $B + $C + $D
Year 3: $B + $C + $D
Total: $XXX

---

## Option B: Buy SaaS Solution

### Initial Costs
- Implementation/integration: $X
- Training: $Y

### Ongoing Costs (Annual)
- License fees: $Z/year
- Per-user costs: $A × users
- API costs: $B

### 3-Year TCO
Year 1: $X + $Y + $Z + $A + $B
Year 2: $Z + $A + $B
Year 3: $Z + $A + $B
Total: $XXX
Common Build vs Buy Scenarios
CapabilityBuild WhenBuy When
AuthenticationUnique security requirementsStandard OAuth/OIDC works
PaymentsCore business differentiatorStandard e-commerce
SearchDomain-specific relevanceGeneric search needs
AnalyticsProprietary insights neededStandard dashboards work
EmailHigh volume, custom deliveryStandard transactional
ML/AIProprietary models neededPre-trained models work

Show full SKILL.md (243 more words)Show less

Cost Projection by Scale

SaaS Application Cost Model
ScaleUsersMonthly InfraNotes
Startup0-1K$200-500Single server, managed DB
Growth1K-10K$500-2,000Load balancer, caching
Scale10K-100K$2,000-10,000Horizontal scaling
Enterprise100K-1M$10,000-50,000Multi-region, HA
Large1M+$50,000+Global, custom CDN
Cost Per User Benchmarks
Application TypeCost/User/MonthNotes
Simple web app$0.05-0.20Static + API
Data-intensive$0.20-0.50Analytics, storage
Real-time$0.50-2.00WebSockets, streaming
ML-powered$1.00-5.00Inference costs
Video/media$2.00-10.00Transcoding, CDN
E-commerce Cost Model
markdown
## Monthly Infrastructure Cost by GMV

$0-100K GMV/month:
- Basic infrastructure: $500
- Payment processing (2.9%): ~$2,000
- Total: ~$2,500

$100K-1M GMV/month:
- Scaled infrastructure: $2,000
- Payment processing: ~$20,000
- Fraud protection: $500
- Total: ~$22,500

$1M-10M GMV/month:
- HA infrastructure: $10,000
- Payment processing: ~$200,000
- Fraud/security: $5,000
- CDN/performance: $3,000
- Total: ~$218,000

Hidden Cost Checklist

Often Missed in Estimates

Infrastructure:

  • Data transfer costs (egress)
  • Backup storage
  • Log storage (CloudWatch: $0.50/GB)
  • SSL certificates
  • DNS queries
  • Load balancer hours

Development:

  • Code reviews (add 20-30% to dev time)
  • Documentation
  • Testing infrastructure
  • CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions: $0.008/min)
  • Staging environments

Operations:

  • Monitoring tools (Datadog: ~$15/host/month)
  • Error tracking (Sentry: $26+/month)
  • Log management
  • On-call compensation
  • Incident response time

Third-Party Services:

  • Email (SendGrid: $0.00025-0.001/email)
  • SMS (Twilio: $0.0075/message)
  • Video (encoding, streaming)
  • Maps/geocoding (Google: $7/1K requests)

Cost Optimization Strategies

Quick Wins
StrategySavingsEffort
Reserved instances30-60%Low
Right-sizing instances20-40%Medium
Spot instances (non-critical)60-90%Medium
Storage tiering50-80%Low
CDN caching30-50% bandwidthLow
Architecture Optimizations
OptimizationImpactComplexity
Caching (Redis)50-80% DB load reductionMedium
Queue-based processingSmooth traffic spikesMedium
Auto-scalingPay for what you useMedium
Serverless (appropriate use)Variable → zero when idleHigh
Multi-region read replicasReduce cross-region costsHigh

Cost Estimation Templates

Project Budget Template
markdown
# Project: [Name]
# Duration: [X months]

## Development Costs

| Phase | Duration | Team Size | Cost |
|-------|----------|-----------|------|
| Discovery/Design | 2 weeks | 2 | $X |
| MVP Development | 8 weeks | 4 | $X |
| Testing/QA | 2 weeks | 3 | $X |
| Deployment | 1 week | 2 | $X |
| **Total Development** | | | **$X** |

## Infrastructure Costs (First Year)

| Component | Monthly | Annual |
|-----------|---------|--------|
| Compute | $X | $X |
| Database | $X | $X |
| Storage | $X | $X |
| Network | $X | $X |
| Third-party APIs | $X | $X |
| Monitoring/Tools | $X | $X |
| **Total Infrastructure** | **$X** | **$X** |

## Ongoing Costs (Annual)

| Category | Cost |
|----------|------|
| Infrastructure | $X |
| Maintenance (20% of dev) | $X |
| Support/On-call | $X |
| Tool licenses | $X |
| **Total Annual** | **$X** |

## Summary

| Metric | Value |
|--------|-------|
| Total First Year | $X |
| Annual Run Rate | $X |
| 3-Year TCO | $X |
| Cost per User (at scale) | $X |
Quick Estimate Calculator
markdown
## Quick Infrastructure Estimate

Inputs:
- Expected users: [X]
- Requests per user/day: [Y]
- Data storage per user: [Z GB]
- Growth rate: [W%/month]

Calculations:
- Daily requests: X × Y
- Monthly requests: Daily × 30
- Required compute: (Monthly requests / 100K) × $50
- Storage: X × Z × $0.10
- Database: (X / 10K) × $200
- Estimated monthly: Compute + Storage + Database × 1.3

12-month projection with growth:
Sum of (Monthly × (1 + W%)^month) for months 1-12

References

© alirezarezvani, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/cost-estimator of alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit a5bbb78

Compare with similar skills

Cost Estimator next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Cost Estimator compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Cost Estimator this skillalirezarezvani/claude-cto-team117—~3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Keeper Stress AnalysisClickHouse/ClickHouse50k—~4.7kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Perf ComparisonClickHouse/ClickHouse50k—~3.9kAutomated safety check: NotesApache-2.0
Patch Release CheckClickHouse/ClickHouse50k—~4kAutomated safety check: NotesApache-2.0
Evolving The Data ModelTriliumNext/Trilium38k—~2.1kAutomated safety check: PassAGPL-3.0
Hybrid Cloud Outboxesgetsentry/sentry46k—~4.8kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence

Similar skills

  • Keeper Stress Analysis

    ClickHouse/ClickHouse

    Analyze ClickHouse Keeper stress-test results from play.clickhouse.com / keeperstresstests data warehouse.

    50k GitHub stars~4.7k tokensUpdated today
    DatabasesAuto-check passed
  • Perf Comparison

    ClickHouse/ClickHouse

    Evaluate ClickHouse performance test results from existing CI/dashboard data or local perf.py runs.

    50k GitHub stars~3.9k tokensUpdated today
    DatabasesAuto-check: notes
  • Patch Release Check

    ClickHouse/ClickHouse

    Check whether ClickHouse's supported versions (last 3 majors + latest LTS) have recent stable patch releases, diagnose why the scheduled AutoReleases pipeline failed, and identify which releases…

    50k GitHub stars~4k tokensUpdated today
    DatabasesAuto-check: notes
  • Evolving The Data Model

    TriliumNext/Trilium

    A skill your agent uses when adding a DB migration or a new column/field to a Becca entity in Trilium ("add a migration", "new column on notes/attributes", "ALTER TABLE", "add a field to…

    38k GitHub stars~2.1k tokensUpdated today
    DatabasesAuto-check passed
  • Hybrid Cloud Outboxes

    getsentry/sentry

    Official

    Guide for creating and maintaining outbox-based eventually consistent operations in Sentry.

    46k GitHub stars~4.8k tokensUpdated today
    DatabasesAuto-check passed
  • Adaptive Spin Wait

    microsoft/garnet

    Official

    Selects Garnet spin-wait policies based on the slow-path cost.

    12k GitHub stars~1k tokensUpdated today
    DatabasesAuto-check passed

More from alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team

All 12 skills in this repo
  • Antipattern Detector

    alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team

    Detect common technical and organizational anti-patterns in proposals, architectures, and plans.

    117 GitHub stars~2.1k tokensUpdated 9 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Architecture Pattern Selector

    alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team

    Recommend architecture patterns (monolith, microservices, serverless, modular monolith) based on scale, team size, and constraints.

    117 GitHub stars~1.6k tokensUpdated 9 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Assumption Challenger

    alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team

    Identify and challenge implicit assumptions in plans, proposals, and technical decisions.

    117 GitHub stars~2.4k tokensUpdated 9 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • ML Cv Specialist

    alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team

    Deep expertise in ML/CV model selection, training pipelines, and inference architecture.

    117 GitHub stars~3.1k tokensUpdated 9 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Request Analyzer

    alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team

    Analyze incoming user requests to detect intent, request type (design/validate/debug/document), complexity level, and identify vague requirements or buzzwords that need clarification.

    117 GitHub stars~1.3k tokensUpdated 9 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Roadmap Generator

    alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team

    Generate phased implementation roadmaps with Epic/Story/Task breakdown, effort estimates, and validation checkpoints.

    117 GitHub stars~1.9k tokensUpdated 9 mo ago
    Auto-check passed

Categories

Questions about Cost Estimator

What does Cost Estimator do?

Infrastructure and development cost estimation for technical projects. Cost Estimator is an agent skill from alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team. Infrastructure and development cost estimation for technical projects.

When should I use Cost Estimator?

Cost Estimator fits situations like: planning budgets; evaluating build vs buy decisions; projecting TCO for architecture choices.

How do I install Cost Estimator in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team --skill cost-estimator -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/cost-estimator in alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team) into .claude/skills/cost-estimator in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Cost Estimator in Codex?

Run `npx skills add alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team --skill cost-estimator -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/cost-estimator in alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team) into .agents/skills/cost-estimator in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Cost Estimator in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team --skill cost-estimator -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/cost-estimator, .gemini/skills/cost-estimator, .github/skills/cost-estimator and .opencode/skills/cost-estimator in your project.

What does Cost Estimator need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Cost Estimator is instructions for the agent only.

Does Cost Estimator access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Cost Estimator safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Cost Estimator use?

Cost Estimator is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Cost Estimator use?

About 3k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 12k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Cost Estimator?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Cost Estimator: Keeper Stress Analysis (ClickHouse/ClickHouse, 50k stars), Perf Comparison (ClickHouse/ClickHouse, 50k stars), Patch Release Check (ClickHouse/ClickHouse, 50k stars) and Evolving The Data Model (TriliumNext/Trilium, 38k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Cost Estimator?

alirezarezvani (a GitHub user) maintains it in alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team, which has 117 GitHub stars. The repository holds 12 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on December 18, 2025.

Source: alirezarezvani/claude-cto-team on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.