The scope, itemised
Proposals vary in wording far more than in content. Nearly all of them are some subset of the following, and separating them is what lets you tell a fair price from a padded one.
| Line item | Shape | Worth paying for? |
|---|---|---|
| Readability or agent audit | One-time | The scan is free; pay only for interpretation |
| Bot and CDN rule review | One-time, an hour | Rarely. It is a config review |
| Content negotiation setup | One-time, middleware | No. The SDK is free and self-hostable |
| Structured data corrections | One-time, then maintenance | Sometimes, if your templates are messy |
| Fact-position restructuring | Per template | Yes, if you lack front-end time |
| Content that answers real questions | Ongoing | Yes. This is the durable half |
| Answer or mention monitoring | Ongoing subscription | Only after the technical half is done |
| Monthly reporting | Ongoing | Only if it reads your server logs, not analytics |
Three of those eight are one-time technical changes that the free tooling covers end to end. If a monthly retainer is mostly those, you are renting something you already own.
The part that costs nothing
The scan needs no account. The gateway SDK is free, unmetered and self-hostable, and the command-line scanner ships zero telemetry, so an audit can run entirely on your own machine without a URL leaving it.
import { gateway } from '@rebilder/gateway'
export default gateway({
source: { kind: 'document', resolve: myPages },
})Insist on a baseline before anything starts
The most common way one of these engagements ends badly is that nobody measured the start, so nobody can prove the finish. Two numbers taken beforehand fix it, and both are free.
- A readability score per template, from a published deterministic spec, so the same page scores the same unless it changed.
- The raw response an agent receives, saved. Bytes and first-fact offset are the two figures that move first when the work is real.
- Then agree what reporting will read. If the answer for the agent half is a page-view tool, change it now: agent fetches fire no beacon and will never appear there. The referred half is different; the free Rebilder Tag counts AI-referred visitors with one pasted line, and the server log covers the rest.