Preface

When you get an offer or negotiate an internal raise, many people get stuck between “not daring to speak up” and “being shut down by one line from HR”: they know they should fight for it, but don’t know how to set anchors or respond to common lowball tactics. There are scattered articles online, but they lack repeatable dialogue scenarios for practice. The following introduces the SkillHub community skill “Salary Negotiation Simulator”, which bakes salary negotiation preparation, strategies, and HR role-playing into a universal SKILL.md, allowing clients that support Skills, such as Cursor and Claude Code, to guide your rehearsal through the same workflow.

What Is This

“Salary Negotiation Simulator” (coordinate @user_70c2f807/salary-negotiation-simulator, version 1.0.0) is maintained by community publisher user_70c2f807, classified as education on SkillHub, with a source of community. The skill is triggered via natural language: when expressions like salary negotiation, offer negotiation, raise negotiation, or the English “salary negotiation” appear in the conversation, the Agent enters salary negotiation coaching and simulation mode according to the skill instructions.

It solves the problem of “not knowing how to respond and lacking structured preparation”; it does not cover scenarios such as labor arbitration, corporate compensation system design, tax and social security consulting, and these boundaries are explicitly stated within the skill.

The SkillHub page shows that this skill requires_api_key=false, and no additional API Key is needed after installation. As of the page and metadata, the rating is 100000, with approximately 825 downloads (installation counts are based on SkillHub display).

Core Functions

The following capabilities all come from the official SKILL.md, and after installation and activation, the Agent executes them step by step:

  1. Information Collection and Scenario Classification: Distinguish between new offers, internal raises, annual salary adjustments, etc.; collect target salary, current salary, position and years of experience, and sort out negotiation leverage (experience, competing offers, performance, etc.).
  2. Strategy Formulation: Help set quote anchors, bottom lines, and ideal ranges, and prepare supporting arguments.
  3. HR Lowball Simulation: Play the role of HR to throw common lowball scripts, letting users practice responses; also provide multiple style responses for single scripts.
  4. Deliverables: Negotiation preparation card (pricing strategy, leverage list, common lowball tactics and responses, principle summary), as well as simulation rehearsal and review summary.
  5. FAQ and Boundary Handling: For example, whether to state expectations first, how to handle unified salary systems, probation salary, etc.; requests to falsely report salary or forge offers will be refused with risk warnings.

Skill declaration: It does not know real-time market salaries; salary ranges need to be researched by users themselves; simulation results are affected by company budgets, interview performance, etc., and no salary promises are made.

Installation and Activation

First confirm that skillhub is installed on your machine (see the SkillHub installation documentation for installation methods). When installing the skill, you must use --dir to point to the current Agent’s skills directory; otherwise, it may default to installing in ./skills/ and may not be recognized.

In Cursor, the common directory is ~/.cursor/skills/. Example installation command:

skillhub install salary-negotiation-simulator --namespace user_70c2f807 --dir ~/.cursor/skills/

Other client directories (excerpted from the official installation documentation, choose one according to the tool you actually use):

  • Claude Code: ~/.claude/skills/
  • Codex: ~/.codex/skills/ or .agents/skills/ under the project
  • Windsurf: ~/.codeium/windsurf/skills/ or .windsurf/skills/

After installation is complete, restart or refresh the Agent according to the requirements of your client so that the new skill is loaded.

Method 2: Have the AI Install According to the Official Prompt

The installation prompt provided on the SkillHub skill page is: Please install @user_70c2f807/salary-negotiation-simulator according to https://skillhub.cn/install/skillhub.md. You can send this sentence to an Agent that has connected to the SkillHub installation flow, and it will execute the installation under the correct --dir.

Official skill package address: https://api.skillhub.cn/user_70c2f807/salary-negotiation-simulator (SkillHub display page: https://www.skillhub.cn/skills/user_70c2f807/salary-negotiation-simulator).

Typical Usage

After enabling the skill, you can complete the entire flow using natural language. The quick start example in the official SKILL.md is as follows (the conversation content is generated by your interaction with the Agent; here we only repeat the trigger method):

  1. Initiate practice: For example, “Help me practice salary negotiation” → The Agent will ask you to supplement your target salary, current salary, applied position and years of experience.
  2. Give parameters: For example, “Target 30K, currently 25K, 5 years of Java development” → Enter simulation mode, where the Agent plays HR to lowball, and you respond.
  3. Single-point script: For example, “HR says my expectation is too high, how to reply?” → Provide response ideas in multiple styles.
  4. Anchors and quotes: For example, “How to determine how much I should ask for?” → Analyze pricing anchors and quotation strategies.
  5. Internal scenarios: For example, “How to negotiate an internal raise?” → Switch to internal salary increase negotiation simulation.

Through the above steps, the Agent will organize the conversation according to Steps 1–4 defined by the skill (understanding the situation → strategy formulation → simulation training → review summary), and output a negotiation preparation card (pricing strategy, leverage, lowball responses, principles, etc.) according to the structure in the documentation.

Applicable Scenarios and Notes

Who it’s for: Professionals who are about to negotiate offers, confirm salaries after probation, adjust internal salaries, or receive annual raises; people who want to repeatedly practice common HR scripts in dialogue rather than just reading static articles.

Please be aware before use:

  • You must provide basic information such as target salary, current salary, position and experience, otherwise the strategy lacks a basis.
  • Market salary data needs to be checked yourself through recruitment platforms, peers, and industry reports; the skill only does analysis and rehearsal, not replacing research.
  • Simulated scripts need to be adjusted based on real leverage and occasions; they should not be rigidly copied; total compensation (year-end bonus, stock, benefits, etc.) and base salary should be considered together.

Explicitly not applicable: Labor arbitration, compensation system design, after-tax income calculation, social security and housing fund policy consulting, etc. The skill will guide users to switch to lawyers, consultants, or specialized tools.

Conclusion

“Salary Negotiation Simulator” breaks salary negotiation from “improvisation” into a repeatable process of information collection, anchoring, rehearsal, and review, suitable for hanging on your daily Coding Agent to practice a round or two anytime. To install from SkillHub or view metadata, visit: https://www.skillhub.cn/skills/user_70c2f807/salary-negotiation-simulator .