Every figure has a source and an access date, or says “not published”.
Research
Build a city brief from official sources
Price a city from statistics offices, fee schedules and tax authorities, with a cost floor, a newcomer premium and a confidence column instead of a copied average.
You are building a city brief for a remote worker considering [CITY] for [MONTHS] months.
Inputs:
- City and dates: [CITY], [DATES]
- My situation: [HOUSEHOLD], [INCOME_CURRENCY], [WORK_HOURS]
- Non-negotiables: [MUST_HAVES]
Use only sources you can open and cite. Prefer the national statistics office, the city government, the tax authority, the immigration authority and the utility or transport regulator.
Produce:
1. A short answer: three bullets on whether this city is worth pricing further, and why.
2. A monthly cost floor in local currency and [INCOME_CURRENCY], with one line each for shelter, utilities, food, local transport, health cover and status costs. Show the source and access date for every line. Mark estimates as "estimate" and give a range.
3. A newcomer premium for the first two months: deposit, short-let markup, agency fee, permits, translations and any required insurance.
4. A resident-versus-newcomer column. Do not blend them into one average.
5. Five questions I must answer before booking, ordered by cost if I get them wrong.
6. A "what would change this" list: the three assumptions that move the total most.
Rules:
- Do not copy a cost-of-living average from a blog, a forum or a search snippet.
- If a figure is not published, write "not published" and name the document that would contain it.
- Do not rank the city against other cities.
- Flag anything that depends on nationality, income type or household size.
- Include the access date for every source.
| Variable | What to put there |
|---|---|
[CITY] | The city and the neighbourhood you are actually considering. A city-wide average is not a rent. |
[MONTHS] | How long you intend to stay. Three months and twelve months have different housing costs and different tax questions. |
[HOUSEHOLD] | One person, a couple, children, pets, accessibility needs. Household size changes the income test and the rent. |
[INCOME_CURRENCY] | The currency you are paid in. The conversion spread is a real line in the budget. |
[MUST_HAVES] | The constraints you will not trade away. Without them the model produces a generic city summary. |
Run it
How to use this template
Give the model a shortlist of two or three cities, not ten. The research gets thinner with every extra city.
Ask for the source table first, then the cost floor. That order makes missing data visible.
Check two figures yourself in the linked source. If they disagree, the rest of the brief needs a second pass.
Convert the floor into months of runway, not a monthly number. That is the decision you are actually making.
Checks
Guardrails before you trust the output
Resident and newcomer costs are separate columns.
The brief does not rank cities or call one “best”.
Tax and permit questions are flagged for a professional, not answered as fact.
Adapt
Variations worth keeping
If you already live there part-time
Ask for a resident-column-only brief and add a line for the cost of the months you are absent: empty rent, storage, insurance, minimum stays.
If the decision is a neighbourhood, not a city
Replace city-wide statistics with the city's own district data and transit isochrones. Ask for commute time to a named coworking space at 08:30 on a weekday.
Why this works
Most city budgets fail for a boring reason: they copy a number from someone else's life. A city average blends a two-year lease with a nightly short-let, a single person with a family, a resident with a new arrival. The average is not wrong; it is answering a different question.
This prompt asks for a floor, not an average. A floor is the minimum you must pay to live there and stay legal. Lifestyle spending sits on top, and you can add it yourself.
What good looks like
The source table should be longer than the cost table. If the model gives you a confident monthly total with three links, ask which lines are estimates. A brief that hides its estimates is not a brief; it is a guess with formatting.
The newcomer premium is often the difference between a plan that works and one that runs out in week six. Deposits, agency fees and permits are lumpy. Put them in the first two months, not spread across the year.
Adapt it to your work
If you move with a family, add a line for school fees and childcare and ask for the official fee schedule, not a forum post. If you are self-employed, add the cost of accounting and any mandatory local registration. If you stay longer than a tourist visa allows, stop and read the visa matrix prompt before you price the rent.
Failure modes
- The model cites a search snippet. Ask for the URL of the page it opened and the sentence it used. If it cannot produce both, drop the line.
- Every cost is in one currency. Ask for local currency first, then the conversion. The spread is part of the cost.
- The brief is a travel guide. Remove climate, food and “vibe” unless they are in your must-haves.
Related templates
This page is part of the free library.
The prompt is also in the Markdown mirror at
/prompts/city-research-brief.md. If the scenario is close but not right, send the gap to the help desk with the output you expected.
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Send the scenario, the prompt that failed, or the harness change that broke your setup. The help desk takes questions and corrections from humans and agents, and every accepted fix updates the page date.