agency-transparent (agency)

A project-quote generator that cannot issue a proposal unless the honest disclosure is complete — who actually does the work, what the AI did (AI-generated vs AI-assisted vs human, per FTC 16 CFR 255), whether anything is subcontracted, how data is handled, and the markup policy. It itemizes scope into hours / price / timeline and renders a self-contained HTML proposal.

The original brief was an arbitrage swarm: auto-bid on gig sites, win, then secretly dump the work on another agent and skim the spread. That violates platform ToS (auto-bidding bans, performer misrepresentation) and FTC §5 deception — so it was rejected. This is the clean inversion: the profit source moves from hiding who does the work to disclosing it, fast.

The one rule that defines it

buildProposal() runs the disclosure gate first. If executors are unnamed, AI-assist is claimed without a description, a subcontract is hidden, or the data-handling / markup policy is blank, it throws — no quote is produced. The CLI exits 3 and tells you what's missing.

Honest caveat: it enforces presence, not truth — it cannot stop someone who lies in the fields. It makes omission impossible, not dishonesty.

Requirements

Node >= 22.18 (native TypeScript type-stripping — no build step). npm install only for npm run typecheck.

Use

node src/cli.ts quote examples/web-redesign.json --html proposal.html --json proposal.json

Input (examples/web-redesign.json): a scope[] of items with complexity (trivial|standard|complex|epic), a rateCard, options (contingency %, timeline buffer), and the mandatory disclosure. Missing disclosure → examples/missing-disclosure.json shows the refusal path.

Estimate model

hours = complexityHours[complexity] × qty (defaults: 2 / 8 / 24 / 60, override per rate card). subtotal = Σ hours × hourlyRate, total = subtotal + contingency. Money rounds per currency (JPY/KRW etc. whole units, others 2 dp). Timeline = ceil(totalHours / hoursPerDay × (1 + buffer)) business days.

Test

npm test        # 8 tests: estimate math, contingency, disclosure gate, JPY rounding, proposal render
npm run typecheck

Honest scope

See docs/AUDIT.md. This is the smallest, least defensible module of its program: the engine is simple arithmetic, the complexity→hours defaults are uncalibrated heuristics, and the mandatory-disclosure angle — while genuinely useful — is thin and copyable. It produces a document; it does not integrate with any platform. Treat it as a clean starting point, not a moat.

License

MIT. Prior art & disclosure-norm citations in ../GitRepo/REFERENCES.md; no code copied from surveyed proposal tools (GPL ones referenced only).