Prompt tax calculator

Work out the yearly hours a recurring, prompt-based AI workflow costs to operate, including the risk when the one person who runs it is away or leaves.

Time per cycle of one recurring, prompt-based workflow, one person, one AI tool.

Translation — turning the real task into a prompt

4 min

Review — reading the output, catching what's wrong

6 min

Handoff — moving the result into the next tool

2 min

Remembering to run it at all

3 min

Cycles per week

1 × / week

Discrete costs — paid once, but real, and usually left off the spreadsheet entirely.

Expert dependency — cost when the one person who runs this is out

8 hrs / yr

Decay risk — rebuild cost the quarter this person leaves

40 hrs / yr

Recurring annual tax

12.5 hrs

15 min/cycle × 50 cycles/yr

Including risk reserve

60.5 hrs

Worth pricing against an intent document

This is the range where a written intent, read by the system instead of retyped by a person, usually pays for itself inside a year.

Run this once per recurring workflow, not once for the org. Three workflows at 15 hours each is the same tax as one at 45.

How it works

  1. 1Set the minutes one run of the workflow takes: translating the task into a prompt, reviewing the output, handing the result to the next tool, and remembering to run it.
  2. 2Set how many times a week it runs. The yearly figure assumes 50 working weeks.
  3. 3Add the one-off costs most spreadsheets leave out: cover when the person who runs it is out, and the rebuild when they leave.
  4. 4Under 10 hours a year, keep it as a prompt. From 10 to 40, price it against writing an intent document. Over 40, it's a standing tax worth paying down.

The argument behind it

The tool is the practical half. The case for why this cost is real, and what to do once you've measured it, is in the Opinion it came from.

Read “The prompt tax” →