cost-estimator

# Cost Estimator (Pre-flight) Before user commits 30 min + $2.40 to /article, show them the estimate. ## When to invoke - `/cost-estimate` — defaults to listicle 6000w - `/cost-estimate listicle 6000` - `/cost-estimate --brief workspace/abc/brief.json` - User asks: "how much for a pillar page?", "what does an article cost?", "is this gonna be over budget?" - Auto-trigger via L1 SKILL.md before phase-research starts (mandatory pre-flight) ## How to invoke ```bash # By format + word count python -m scripts._core.cost_estimator --format listicle --words 6000 # From an existing brief.json python -m scripts._core.cost_estimator --brief workspace/abc123/brief.json --json # With cheaper config python -m scripts._core.cost_estimator \ --format how-to-guide --words 4500 \ --images 2 --image-quality medium --batch # Machine-readable python -m scripts._core.cost_estimator --format pillar-page --json ``` ## Output (human-readable) ``` ━━━ /article cost estimate ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Format: listicle (target 6000 words) Images: 4 × high-quality 1024² (batch) Drafter / pipeline model: claude-opus-4-7 / claude-opus-4-7 Cache hit rate assumed: 30% Breakdown: Research (Tavily ×8 adv search + 12 extracts): $0.1664 Drafting (6000w via claude-opus-4-7, 21,000 in + 8,400 out + 9,000 cached): $0.3360 Pipeline stages (13 stages, 124,000 in + 13,500 out via claude-opus-4-7): $0.6469 Images (4 × gpt-image-2 high 1024² batch): $0.4220 Overhead buffer (10%): $0....