Package Pricing Lab: price the work, not the clock.

Connect it

1. In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors.
2. Choose Add custom connector, paste https://mcp.modernmustardseed.com/pricing-lab, and save. No account or key is needed.
3. In a chat, describe your costs and your work. Claude calls the tools when the question needs them.

In Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http pricing-lab https://mcp.modernmustardseed.com/pricing-lab

Try these

• “I run a two-person brand design studio. Overhead is $3,200 a month, I need to pay myself $7,000, my partner costs $5,500, and we have about 220 hours a month for client work. Build me three packages from: discovery workshop (6 hours), logo suite (18 hours), brand guidelines (14 hours), social templates (10 hours), website homepage design (24 hours, $300 in fonts and stock), and a launch kit of print files (8 hours, $150 printing proofs).”
• “Stress test my $6,500 kitchen design package. It usually takes 40 hours with $400 in renderings, I sell four a month, fixed costs are $4,000, I pay myself $6,000, I have 150 delivery hours a month and $15,000 in reserve. What happens if jobs run 25 percent long and a month comes in slow?”
• “I bill by the hour today and only about 80 percent of my time gets invoiced. Compare that with two packages for the same work: a $2,400 website refresh that takes about 24 hours and a $4,800 rebuild that takes about 48. I do 5 jobs a month, my costs are $2,500 a month plus $5,000 owner pay, and I have 140 hours for client work.”

The tools

How the math works

• Cost per delivery hour. Fixed costs, owner pay and staff cost are added up and spread over the delivery hours you expect to fill (80 percent of capacity unless you say otherwise), then any cost that rises with the work is added. Hours measure capacity and cost inside the tool. Clients see a package price, never hours.
• Tiers. Each deliverable is core (in all three tiers), common (middle and largest) or premium (largest only). A tier costs its effort times the cost per delivery hour, plus direct costs. Effort carries a 15 percent variance buffer by default, because a fixed price absorbs the jobs that run long and adjustments are included.
• Price. Target price is cost divided by one minus the target margin (30 percent by default, after owner pay). The recommended price rounds up to a clean step (10 under 500, 50 under 2,000, 100 under 10,000, 500 under 50,000, then 1,000), so the margin never falls below target.
• Headroom. How far the work can run past its listed effort before a package earns nothing. Under 20 percent is flagged.
• Capacity. At the expected mix (30, 50, 20 percent by default), the tool reports hours needed, the most clients the planned hours hold, break-even clients a month, and the month profit after owner pay.
• Stress test. Scope creep means more effort on the same deliverables. The month view uses real cash, so fixed costs and owner pay stay put when sales fall.
• Comparison. Time-based revenue is hours worked, times the share that reaches an invoice, times the rate. Package revenue is the price. As delivery gets faster, the first falls and the second holds.
• Scope language. Plain lines only. The tool never writes extra-charge or time-based wording, and leaves out any input line that uses it, naming where it was.

Limits

• Each tool answers up to 120 calls a minute per server instance, and the connector accepts 10,000 calls a day across all users. Over a limit, the tool says so and gives the time to try again.
• build_packages takes 3 to 40 deliverables; compare_models and package_scope_language take one to three packages.
• The tools do not know your market. Prices come from your costs and your target margin; the outcome_value input gives a check against what the result is worth to the client.

Data sources and licenses

There are none to license. Every result is computed from the inputs in the call, by formulas written by Modern Mustard Seed and shown on this page. The tools make no network requests and store nothing.

Troubleshooting

“Three tiers need at least one item at each level”

Mark each deliverable core, common or premium, with at least one of each.

Break-even is above what capacity holds

The monthly outlay is too large for the hours at these prices. Raise the target margin, trim effort from each tier, or check delivery_hours_per_month.

A scope line is missing from the output

It used time-based or extra-charge wording. The notes field names the package and line. Restate it as a deliverable.

For reviewers

No account, key or setup is needed. Add the connector URL above, then:

1. build_packages with business {"monthly_fixed_costs":3200,"monthly_owner_pay":7000,"monthly_staff_cost":5500,"delivery_hours_per_month":220}, offer_name Brand identity, and items such as {"name":"Logo suite","effort_hours":18,"level":"core"}, {"name":"Brand guidelines","effort_hours":14,"level":"common"}, {"name":"Website homepage design","effort_hours":24,"direct_cost":300,"level":"premium"}. Returns three tiers with prices and a capacity check.
2. stress_test_package with the same business, package {"name":"Kitchen design","price":6500,"effort_hours":40,"direct_cost":400}, sales_per_month 4, cash_reserve 15000.
3. compare_models with current {"rate":95,"unit":"hour","billed_share_pct":80}, packages [{"name":"Refresh","price":2400,"effort_hours":24}], jobs_per_month 5.
4. package_scope_language with packages [{"name":"Starter","includes":["One logo","Color palette"]},{"name":"Full","includes":["One logo","Color palette","Brand guidelines"],"excludes":["Printing"]}].
5. Errors: a build_packages call with no premium item returns a specific message naming the missing level.

Support and security

Questions, problems and security reports go to sarah@modernmustardseed.com. A machine-readable contact is at /.well-known/security.txt. How we handle data is in the privacy policy.