Find the vendor you’re overpaying.
The most expensive vendor may be earning every dollar. Look for the strongest evidence that equivalent value is available on better terms, then turn it into a negotiation you can prepare for.
Try it now
Copy the prompt into your AI tool of choice, then answer its questions as they come.
Paste it into any AI chat to start. For most people, this is all you need.
Everything on this page in one paste: the prompt plus the full plan, every step and what to check. Use it for longer moves, to plan ahead, to share with a colleague, or if your AI can't open links.
How it goes
What the AI will do
- Investigate vendor contracts, invoices, usage, service history and procurement discussions to establish total cost and value received.
- Research current comparable offers, verify the strongest candidate and write a negotiation brief with realistic savings assumptions.
What to have ready
- The vendor set or spending area and your decision horizon, such as an upcoming renewal.
- Access to contracts, invoices, usage, service records and procurement correspondence; existing quotes or permitted exports are useful.
Where you come in
- Confirm consequential requirements and clarify missing contract or service context.
- Review the evidence and proposed negotiation asks; contacting vendors or changing contracts is separate.
What you'll get
A source-verified negotiation brief for the clearest supported case, or a clear finding that overpayment was not established, with dated comparisons and total-cost assumptions.
You're done when
You have a reviewed negotiation brief grounded in comparable current offers and your actual costs and requirements, or a clear evidence-based finding that overpayment was not established.
These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result. ### Start with the activity and the user's context Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear. Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them. ### Check the capabilities needed for this work Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit. When useful access is missing: - Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help. - Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot. - If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response. - Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available. ### Ask focused questions and respect the answers Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful. Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements. ### Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material. Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work: - Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role. - Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations. - Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately. ### Produce, check, and revise the result Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them. Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result. Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized. Help me identify the clearest supported case that we are overpaying a vendor and prepare a source-verified negotiation brief. Compare equivalent value and realistic total costs. A finding that overpayment is not established is valid. ### 1. Establish the decision and actual vendor record Start with the vendors, category or renewal question I supplied. Inspect and try relevant connections. Search contracts, amendments, purchase orders, invoices, license and service usage, service-level records and procurement files. Search related emails, chats including WhatsApp where accessible, calendar-linked renewal discussions, meeting transcripts, user complaints and project documents for promised value, actual needs, negotiating history, known alternatives and constraints. Establish who owns the agreement, who uses the service, the decision date and the capabilities that matter. Ground user needs and dissatisfaction in actual service records and expressed concerns; do not infer broad dissatisfaction from one complaint. Ask one question at a time about consequential ambiguity and wait on affected comparisons. If useful access fails, investigate permitted setup, export or upload options before requesting specific records. Rough notes can identify leads, but missing contracts, usage or service requirements limit a defensible comparison. State early when you can produce only a provisional opportunity brief, not establish overpayment. ### 2. Calculate what we actually pay and receive Build a baseline for each in-scope vendor, with source references and an as-of date. Record: - Product, edition, quantities, geography, users and actual usage over a relevant period. - Contracted rate, discounts, minimums, overages, taxes and recurring fees. - Implementation, support, integrations, training and other material costs. - Term, notice and renewal dates, price-change terms and outstanding commitments. - Service performance, required capabilities and the value of features or support we actually use. Reconcile invoices to the operative agreement and amendments. Separate current prices from legacy terms, quotes from executed contracts and effective dates from correspondence dates. Link superseding terms explicitly; a later email is not automatically an agreed amendment. Normalize the baseline to a clear comparison period without confusing sunk costs with avoidable future costs. ### 3. Research comparable current alternatives Use current vendor pricing, official product documentation and service terms, actual available quotes, and comparable internal contracts or negotiated terms. Retrieve and date the source pages or documents. A published list price, an introductory promotion and a binding enterprise quote provide different kinds of evidence; label them. Do not invent customary discounts or claim an unavailable private quote. Compare like for like: edition, required features, volume, usage limits, support level, service commitments, term, geography and relevant security or integration requirements documented in our records. Identify differences that cannot be priced reliably. Include migration, implementation, retraining, dual-running, exit fees and productivity disruption where material and evidenced; label estimates and ask for consequential missing inputs. If contacting vendors would be needed for a firm quote, prepare the exact request but do not send it in this activity. Existing access and public research may support a negotiating lead without proving an executable alternative. ### 4. Divide vendors and verify the strongest case Where useful, assign bounded vendors or categories to separate agents. Give each its contract and usage sources, required comparison criteria, public research scope, deliverable fields and completion criterion: a sourced baseline, dated alternatives, transparent total-cost calculation and explicit gaps. Track coverage and shared costs centrally. Use waves when concurrency is limited. If agents are unavailable, use manageable passes or fresh sessions with evidence, decisions and remaining-coverage handoffs. Do not claim independent research when passes share context. Reconcile findings and rank the evidence, not merely headline percentage savings. A lower price for materially less service does not establish overpayment. Select the strongest candidate for independent verification. Give a reviewer the actual comparison and original sources without your rationale or preferred verdict. Require it to recheck operative terms, current offer availability, eligibility, quantities, service equivalence, arithmetic and transition costs. Resolve material findings; use a fresh session where possible and describe a shared-context fallback honestly. ### 5. Build the negotiation brief For the strongest supported case, distinguish three amounts: current comparable cost, credible alternative total cost, and the negotiating ask. Show the calculation, time horizon and assumptions. Separate first-year savings from later recurring savings. A proposed ask is not an offer the vendor has agreed to accept. Develop specific requests grounded in the evidence: price adjustment, right-sized quantity, better service terms, removal of an unused component or a documented alternative worth considering. Explain the tradeoffs and what would make staying worthwhile. Use our priorities and decision authority from the record; ask me to confirm a consequential preference or walk-away condition before treating it as mine. Deliver a concise brief with the current position, verified comparison, realistic savings range, proposed asks, supporting source links, likely questions and unresolved evidence. Include a draft opening for the negotiation, clearly identified as a draft. If the evidence does not establish overpayment, say so and explain whether a narrower price or service question remains worth asking. Stop with the reviewed brief. Do not contact a vendor, cancel service, disclose internal terms externally or claim savings have been realized. These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.
View full AI instructions
Find the vendor you’re overpaying.
What the AI will do
- Investigate vendor contracts, invoices, usage, service history and procurement discussions to establish total cost and value received.
- Research current comparable offers, verify the strongest candidate and write a negotiation brief with realistic savings assumptions.
What you can provide
- The vendor set or spending area and your decision horizon, such as an upcoming renewal.
- Access to contracts, invoices, usage, service records and procurement correspondence; existing quotes or permitted exports are useful.
Where you'll take part
- Confirm consequential requirements and clarify missing contract or service context.
- Review the evidence and proposed negotiation asks; contacting vendors or changing contracts is separate.
What you'll get
A source-verified negotiation brief for the clearest supported case, or a clear finding that overpayment was not established, with dated comparisons and total-cost assumptions.
Activity context
The most expensive vendor may be earning every dollar. Look for the strongest evidence that equivalent value is available on better terms, then turn it into a negotiation you can prepare for.
For the user
Start with the vendors or category you want examined. The AI will search internal records and current alternatives, then compare equivalent quantities and service requirements. You may need to clarify a requirement or supply an inaccessible contract. It will prepare a negotiation brief; it will not promise overpayment, contact vendors or change your agreements.
Guidance for the AI
These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result.
Start with the activity and the user's context
Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear.
Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them.
Check the capabilities needed for this work
Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit.
When useful access is missing:
- Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help.
- Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot.
- If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response.
- Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available.
Ask focused questions and respect the answers
Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful.
Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements.
Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct
Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material.
Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work:
- Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role.
- Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations.
- Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately.
Produce, check, and revise the result
Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them.
Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result.
Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized.
Your AI prompt
Help me identify the clearest supported case that we are overpaying a vendor and prepare a source-verified negotiation brief. Compare equivalent value and realistic total costs. A finding that overpayment is not established is valid.
1. Establish the decision and actual vendor record
Start with the vendors, category or renewal question I supplied. Inspect and try relevant connections. Search contracts, amendments, purchase orders, invoices, license and service usage, service-level records and procurement files. Search related emails, chats including WhatsApp where accessible, calendar-linked renewal discussions, meeting transcripts, user complaints and project documents for promised value, actual needs, negotiating history, known alternatives and constraints.
Establish who owns the agreement, who uses the service, the decision date and the capabilities that matter. Ground user needs and dissatisfaction in actual service records and expressed concerns; do not infer broad dissatisfaction from one complaint. Ask one question at a time about consequential ambiguity and wait on affected comparisons.
If useful access fails, investigate permitted setup, export or upload options before requesting specific records. Rough notes can identify leads, but missing contracts, usage or service requirements limit a defensible comparison. State early when you can produce only a provisional opportunity brief, not establish overpayment.
2. Calculate what we actually pay and receive
Build a baseline for each in-scope vendor, with source references and an as-of date. Record:
- Product, edition, quantities, geography, users and actual usage over a relevant period.
- Contracted rate, discounts, minimums, overages, taxes and recurring fees.
- Implementation, support, integrations, training and other material costs.
- Term, notice and renewal dates, price-change terms and outstanding commitments.
- Service performance, required capabilities and the value of features or support we actually use.
Reconcile invoices to the operative agreement and amendments. Separate current prices from legacy terms, quotes from executed contracts and effective dates from correspondence dates. Link superseding terms explicitly; a later email is not automatically an agreed amendment. Normalize the baseline to a clear comparison period without confusing sunk costs with avoidable future costs.
3. Research comparable current alternatives
Use current vendor pricing, official product documentation and service terms, actual available quotes, and comparable internal contracts or negotiated terms. Retrieve and date the source pages or documents. A published list price, an introductory promotion and a binding enterprise quote provide different kinds of evidence; label them. Do not invent customary discounts or claim an unavailable private quote.
Compare like for like: edition, required features, volume, usage limits, support level, service commitments, term, geography and relevant security or integration requirements documented in our records. Identify differences that cannot be priced reliably. Include migration, implementation, retraining, dual-running, exit fees and productivity disruption where material and evidenced; label estimates and ask for consequential missing inputs.
If contacting vendors would be needed for a firm quote, prepare the exact request but do not send it in this activity. Existing access and public research may support a negotiating lead without proving an executable alternative.
4. Divide vendors and verify the strongest case
Where useful, assign bounded vendors or categories to separate agents. Give each its contract and usage sources, required comparison criteria, public research scope, deliverable fields and completion criterion: a sourced baseline, dated alternatives, transparent total-cost calculation and explicit gaps. Track coverage and shared costs centrally. Use waves when concurrency is limited.
If agents are unavailable, use manageable passes or fresh sessions with evidence, decisions and remaining-coverage handoffs. Do not claim independent research when passes share context. Reconcile findings and rank the evidence, not merely headline percentage savings. A lower price for materially less service does not establish overpayment.
Select the strongest candidate for independent verification. Give a reviewer the actual comparison and original sources without your rationale or preferred verdict. Require it to recheck operative terms, current offer availability, eligibility, quantities, service equivalence, arithmetic and transition costs. Resolve material findings; use a fresh session where possible and describe a shared-context fallback honestly.
5. Build the negotiation brief
For the strongest supported case, distinguish three amounts: current comparable cost, credible alternative total cost, and the negotiating ask. Show the calculation, time horizon and assumptions. Separate first-year savings from later recurring savings. A proposed ask is not an offer the vendor has agreed to accept.
Develop specific requests grounded in the evidence: price adjustment, right-sized quantity, better service terms, removal of an unused component or a documented alternative worth considering. Explain the tradeoffs and what would make staying worthwhile. Use our priorities and decision authority from the record; ask me to confirm a consequential preference or walk-away condition before treating it as mine.
Deliver a concise brief with the current position, verified comparison, realistic savings range, proposed asks, supporting source links, likely questions and unresolved evidence. Include a draft opening for the negotiation, clearly identified as a draft. If the evidence does not establish overpayment, say so and explain whether a narrower price or service question remains worth asking. Stop with the reviewed brief. Do not contact a vendor, cancel service, disclose internal terms externally or claim savings have been realized.
Done when
You have a reviewed negotiation brief grounded in comparable current offers and your actual costs and requirements, or a clear evidence-based finding that overpayment was not established.
These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.
These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.