trade-in-valuator

trade-in-valuator is a skill for Claude Code from DaizeDong/buy-me-a-car. It costs 121 tokens per session (3,392 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for estimating the value of a vehicle offered as a trade-in, including several market estimates, possible tax credits, and loan payoff timing. A trade-in is a vehicle given to a dealer toward another purchase.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to assess a trade-in, compare Kelley Blue Book and private-party values, consider trade-in tax credits, or plan a lien payoff.
Why use it?
It helps compare trading the vehicle with selling it separately and accounts for the remaining loan and state-specific tax rules.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Needs its repository: it reads a path above its own folder, which exists only inside the repository. The line is `../orchestrator/references/ev_buyer_playbook.md` § 25E and `trade_in.md`.

Part of the buy-me-a-car plugin — 16 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to assess a trade-in, compare Kelley Blue Book and private-party values, consider trade-in tax credits, or plan a lien payoff.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DaizeDong/buy-me-a-car
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/daizedong/buy-me-a-car/trade-in-valuator

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install buy-me-a-car, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for trade-in-valuator

README.md
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Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/daizedong/buy-me-a-car/trade-in-valuator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/daizedong/buy-me-a-car/trade-in-valuator/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

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Your own site · 80×15
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Per session 121 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,392 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00121 $0.03392
Opus 5 $0.00060 $0.01696
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00678
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00339

Measured 12d ago against content hash 0bdeb758db15, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

trade-in-valuator scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/trade-in-valuator/SKILL.md · 223 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 223 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Trade-in Valuator

Caveat: this skill is one author's playbook + 5-scenario stress test. Verify state fees / CPO terms / EV credits / dealer practices against current sources before quoting numbers to a dealer or making financial decisions. Not tax, legal, or financial advice.

last_verified: 2026-05-18

Narrow-trigger skill: produce a defensible trade-in valuation, decide separate-sell vs trade-in, and stage lien-payoff timing. Defers full reference content to ../orchestrator/references/trade_in.md and state-specific tax mechanics to ../orchestrator/references/state_fees.md.

When to invoke

User says any of: "valuate my trade", "what's my Civic worth", "KBB vs private party", "trade-in tax credit", "lien payoff", or the CN triggers in the frontmatter. Skip this skill if there is no trade (Phase 1 trade gate = NO).

5-anchor valuation framework

Per ../orchestrator/references/trade_in.md Section 1: every trade vehicle has four book/market valuations -- and for EVs and PHEVs, a fifth anchor: battery State of Health (SoH). Capture every applicable anchor at Phase 1 -- misreading them is the #1 source of buyer loss in trade-in deals.

# Anchor What it is Typical relationship Role
1 KBB Instant Cash Offer Real cash a participating dealer will pay TODAY, no negotiation Lowest of the four (dealer floor) Walk-floor outside option. Any dealer trade offer below this is asking buyer to subsidize.
2 KBB Trade-In Value (Fair condition mid) KBB book trade-in value at stated condition $600-$1,300 above KBB Instant Offer Mid; fair dealer trade target. Use as primary anchor.
3 KBB Private Party Value What buyer can realistically sell for on Craigslist / FB Marketplace $1,500-$3,000 above KBB Trade-In; transacts 7-14 days for clean 1-owner Upper bound; the price the buyer trades convenience for.
4 Wholesale (Manheim MMR / Black Book) Dealer auction acquisition floor Lowest; dealer-internal Internal benchmark only; buyers rarely see MMR. Estimate ~5-10% below KBB Instant Offer for popular models.
5 Battery State of Health (SoH) -- EV/PHEV only Verified pack capacity retention (%) from OBD-II / dealer scan / mfr app -- NOT the dashboard range estimate Cross-cutting modifier on anchors 1-4, not a standalone $ figure The dominant EV factor: for a used EV the pack is the most expensive component, so SoH moves resale more than paint/trim/often mileage. Books usually ignore it -- so treat books as a soft ceiling and adjust for SoH.

Read the full file on GitHub · 223 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 223 lines · 121 tokens per session scan A 0bdeb758db15

Subscribe to this mod's changes

trade-in-valuator is a skill published in the GitHub repository DaizeDong/buy-me-a-car (5 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 121 tokens to every session and 3,392 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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