What do I need to use Car TCO?

Which scenarios to compare; Horizon; Miles per year.

Is Car TCO free to use?

Yes — run it free in the browser playground (no API key needed for the sponsored trial, or bring any provider key), or install it into Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT and more via npx pm-claude-skills. MIT-licensed and open source.

Car TCO

Q: How do I know the Car TCO output is good?

The skill verifies itself against its own quality checks: All scenarios use the same horizon and mileage; Resale value is credited back in every ownership scenario; Per-month true cost appears next to the totals; Sub-10% margins are called ties, not winners.

🔵 Stable🕐 updated 2026-07-17 🔷 SkillSpec L3 ⚙ ships an executable helper pm-calculators

Compare the total cost of car ownership across buy-new, buy-used, lease, and keep-your-current-car — depreciation, insurance, maintenance ramp, and fuel over a real horizon, not just the monthly payment. Use when asked should I lease or buy a car, is it cheaper to keep my old car, what does this car really cost per month, or new vs used total cost. Produces the ranked scenario totals, per-month true cost, the assumption ledger, and the not-modeled list.

▶ Run it free — no key needed 📝 Grade your existing draft View SKILL.md ↗

What to give it

▸Which scenarios to compare — any of: new price, used-equivalent price, lease terms, current car's value + annual maintenance

▸Horizon — years they realistically keep cars (default 8, labeled); short horizons flatter leasing, long ones flatter buying

▸Miles per year — and rough fuel/energy cost (defaults 12,000 mi / $0.14 per mile, labeled)

✅ The bar it holds itself to

Every skill in this library self-verifies — these are this skill's own quality checks, straight from its definition.

✓All scenarios use the same horizon and mileage

✓Resale value is credited back in every ownership scenario

✓Per-month true cost appears next to the totals

✓Sub-10% margins are called ties, not winners

✓The disclaimer line appears in the artifact

⚠️ What it refuses to do

Do not rank on monthly payment — that's the illusion this skill exists to correct

Do not omit depreciation or resale from ownership scenarios

Do not treat maintenance fears as data — use the ramp, and compare repairs to replacement depreciation

Do not extrapolate one scenario's horizon onto another (a 3-year lease vs 8-year ownership is not a comparison)

Do not moralize the want — price the options honestly and let the user choose with open eyes

Install

npx pm-claude-skills add --agent claude   # or codex · cursor · gemini · hermes
# or one-line MCP (every skill, any client):
claude mcp add pm-skills -- npx -y pm-claude-skills-mcp

Related skills

🔌 Embed this skill

Drop this on your blog, docs, or site — it renders a "Run this skill" card:

<div data-pm-skill="car-tco"></div>
<script src="https://mohitagw15856.github.io/pm-claude-skills/embed.js" async></script>

💬 Discussion

Car TCO is one of 599 open-source professional AI agent skills — all SkillSpec L3. Try them all in the browser · ⭐ Star on GitHub · Browse the full catalog