Introduction¶
End-of-month utility bills often remain unclear until the settlement date. With only scattered readings or previous month’s amounts available during the month, it is difficult to determine “whether I will exceed the budget this month.” Calculating tiered pricing and seasonal fluctuations using personal spreadsheets requires checking local policies and recording data from recent months, which is too costly for most families. If you are chatting within clients that support Agent Skills, such as Cursor or Claude Code, you can entrust the estimation process to a Skill to execute in fixed steps: first collect data, then predict, and finally provide trends and recommendations.
Below is an introduction to the SkillHub community skill “Utility Bill Estimator” (@user_70c2f807/utility-bill-estimator), explaining its positioning, capabilities, and installation method.
What is this¶
“Utility Bill Estimator” is an Agent Skill that follows the universal SKILL.md format. Its coordinates are @user_70c2f807/utility-bill-estimator. The current version is 1.0.2, the source is community, the category is life-service, and it is maintained by the publisher user_70c2f807. The SkillHub page marks requires_api_key=false, meaning no additional API Key is needed.
The skill is triggered during conversations when users mention utility bills, electricity estimation, power consumption, utility bill, electricity estimate, water bill, or ask how to estimate utility expenses. It is not applicable to requests involving payment agency, energy-saving renovation projects, or appliance repairs.
One-sentence positioning: Based on historical usage and appliance habits, it predicts the current month’s water, electricity, and gas costs, analyzes trends and abnormal fluctuations, and provides actionable energy-saving suggestions; it does not handle payments or connect to power or payment systems.
Core Functions¶
The following capabilities are derived from the SKILL.md description within the skill package:
- Predicts current month’s water and electricity (and gas) costs based on historical data.
- Analyzes seasonal usage trends.
- Calculates costs based on tiered electricity and water pricing logic (requires user to provide location and policy information).
- Estimates the power consumption share of major appliances.
- Identifies abnormal usage fluctuations and explains possible reasons.
- Outputs energy-saving and cost-saving suggestions; the skill states the estimation error is approximately 10–20%, and actual bills should be the final reference.
The skill explicitly requires: past usage or costs as a baseline; electricity prices vary by region and tier, so location should be provided; it cannot pay bills directly.
Installation and Activation¶
Install SkillHub CLI¶
If the CLI is not installed, you can check the version first:
command -v skillhub && skillhub --version
If not installed, follow the SkillHub official installation documentation (full installation or CLI only):
curl -fsSL https://skillhub-1388575217.cos.ap-guangzhou.myqcloud.com/install/install.sh | bash
curl -fsSL https://skillhub-1388575217.cos.ap-guangzhou.myqcloud.com/install/install.sh | bash -s -- --cli-only
Install this Skill¶
During installation, you must use --dir to point to the current Agent’s skills directory; otherwise, it defaults to ./skills/ and may not be loaded by the client. The installation prompt given on the official page is: Refer to https://skillhub.cn/install/skillhub.md to install @user_70c2f807/utility-bill-estimator.
The installation command shown in CLI search results is:
skillhub install utility-bill-estimator --namespace user_70c2f807 --dir <skills directory>
Common client skills directories (excerpt from SkillHub installation documentation):
- Claude Code:
~/.claude/skills/ - Cursor:
~/.cursor/skills/ - Codex:
~/.codex/skills/or.agents/skills/under the project
You can also send the prompt above to an AI to let it complete the installation according to skillhub.md. After installation, restart or refresh the skill list according to the specific client’s requirements.
Typical Usage¶
The skill has a built-in “Quick Start” conversation example that can be directly reproduced:
User: Help me estimate this month's electricity bill
→ Agent will ask the user for last month's consumption/cost and special conditions this month (e.g., turning on AC)
User: Used 200 kWh last month, cost 150 RMB
→ Estimates this month's cost based on usage habits and seasonal factors
User: Started using the air conditioner this month
→ Includes AC power consumption and raises the estimate
User: How to save electricity?
→ Analyzes electricity composition and gives energy-saving advice
User: Is it normal for utility bills to fluctuate a lot every month?
→ Analyzes causes of fluctuation and helps identify anomalies
The Agent executes in three steps defined by the skill: Collect Data (usage/costs from last 3–6 months, family size and major appliances, region and electricity price, special factors this month) → Estimate & Predict (monthly average, seasonal and special factors, tiered costs) → Analyze & Suggest (trends, composition, energy-saving potential). The output is structured Markdown, including historical data tables, current month estimates, electricity composition, trends, energy-saving suggestions, and tiered pricing references; the skill requires labeling the nature of the estimation and the error range.
Scenarios and Caveats¶
Who it is for
- Families wanting to sense the total utility expenditure (water, electricity, gas) for the current month in advance.
- Users already using AI clients that support Skills and willing to provide historical readings or bill amounts.
- Those needing trend interpretation or “is usage abnormal” judgment, rather than financial reconciliation accurate to the cent.
Limitations and Pitfalls
| Scenario | Description |
|---|---|
| No historical data | The skill will prompt to supplement last month’s cost/usage or family/appliance info; prediction has limited reference value with only one month of data, at least 3 months recommended |
| Exact payment amount | Estimation is for reference only; payment must be done manually on platforms like Alipay or WeChat |
| Commercial electricity, PV revenue, energy-saving retrofits | Skill marks these as not applicable; professional channels should be used |
| Privacy | Skill states it does not store usage or addresses, nor connect to payment or power systems |
SkillHub crawled metadata shows: Rating 100000, Downloads 827 (statistics subject to the store page and changing over time).
Conclusion¶
“Utility Bill Estimator” converges the prediction of household energy bills, tiered and seasonal factors, anomaly identification, and energy-saving suggestions into a single conversational workflow, without requiring an API Key. If you are already using SkillHub to manage skills, you can install it into the corresponding skills directory using the command above, and try it out using natural language with historical usage and location information.
Official Entrances:
- SkillHub Page: https://www.skillhub.cn/skills/user_70c2f807/utility-bill-estimator
- Skill Coordinate Page: https://api.skillhub.cn/user_70c2f807/utility-bill-estimator