Builds the script around who is legally obliged to name a number first and who is barred from asking your pay history, then scripts the exchanges that follow from that.
/plugin marketplace add mkhalid1/locul-skills
Then /plugin to install Resumes and job search, which includes this skill.
We have not measured this one. It is published untested, and the honest starting assumption is that a capable model asked for a salary negotiation script already writes fluent, sensible, well-mannered lines. Most of them are fine. The problem is not the prose.
The problem is that the strongest card in a modern negotiation is not a technique. In a growing number of places the employer is legally obliged to tell you the range, and legally barred from asking what you currently earn, and a script written without knowing which of those apply leaves that unplayed. So this file leads with the legal position and derives the script from it.
What is actually inside it, concretely. A dated jurisdiction map: Ontario from 1 January 2026, where a posting must carry compensation or a range, the range may not exceed $50,000, postings above $200,000 are exempt and employers under 25 employees are exempt; British Columbia from 1 November 2023, with no headcount threshold and a pay-history ban; and the EU directive whose Article 5 gives an applicant information right and whose Article 5(2) bans pay-history questions outright. A count of the gap, because as at 30 August 2026 twelve of twenty-seven member states had notified no implementing measure at all, and a script that cites the directive in one of those twelve is citing something the candidate cannot yet invoke. And two verified negatives, that neither the UK nor Australia requires a salary range in a job advert, which is the fact most likely to get someone to assert a right they do not have.
Who this is not for. If you are negotiating an internal promotion, most of the disclosure machinery is beside the point, because you already know the band. It is also overkill for a role where the offer is a published public sector scale point with no discretion in it, since there is nothing to negotiate except the point you start on.
Measuring one skill honestly costs about twenty model sessions: five runs with it, five without, on real material, each output graded alone by a session that is not told the other arm exists, against a rubric written by somebody who never saw the skill. We have not spent that on this one yet, so it ships labelled rather than ships silently.
How it would be measured. Tier A. Material: six invented role briefs, each stating where the job is advertised and where the successful applicant would be employed, the text of the advert including whether a range appears, the employer's headcount, and the exact wording of the recruiter's first question. One brief is an Ontario posting of 90 employees with a $40,000 range, one a British Columbia posting with a range of $60,000 and a pay-history question, one a German role advertised with no range, one a UK role where the candidate believes a range is legally required, one an Australian role where the candidate wants to ask a colleague at another employer what they earn, and one deliberately ambiguous remote role with an unnamed employing entity. Objective spine: whether the file names the correct in-force instrument and date for each brief, whether it correctly declines to assert a right in the UK and Australia briefs, whether it selects the branch the brief was built for including the cannot-tell branch on the ambiguous one, and whether any legal claim appears without a jurisdiction and a date attached.
The objective spine here is unusually good. Each brief can name a jurisdiction whose in-force position is verifiable, so "did the output claim a right that does not exist there" is gradable against ground truth rather than against taste. The UK and Australia briefs are the load-bearing ones, because a wrong answer there is confident and specific rather than vague.
A fair test needs briefs that state the employing entity and the place of work separately, since that is where a real remote role goes ambiguous and where the cannot-tell branch either fires or does not. What we would expect a plain prompt to already do well is the script itself: the deferral line, the counter, the tone. The narrow question is whether it invents a legal right, and whether it knows that twelve member states had notified nothing.
The rule that decides pass or fail was written down before any run was executed and it does not move afterwards. It is in the method note on the hub, along with the full results table including every skill that was tested and cut.
Stated plainly, because a skill that claims everything is useful for nothing.
name and description in the file's frontmatter, so you can also invoke it by name.The primary sources are free and better than any summary if you want the wording: the directive itself for Article 5, the Ontario regulation for the posting rules, the British Columbia statute for the pay-history ban. Read them when the question is whether a rule applies. They will not write you a script, or tell you what to say when a recruiter asks your current salary somewhere asking is perfectly lawful.
For the evidence half of the job, the two regulator databases beat anything an assistant can produce from memory: the Australian regulator publishes gender pay gaps for named employers of 100 or more, and the UK service publishes six figures a year for employers of 250 or more. Both are employer-specific, public, and almost nobody looks.
A competent person with an hour, the advert and the patience to read one statute will do a single negotiation as well as this file does. The case for a written method is that the legal position changes by country and by year, it is exactly the kind of thing that gets remembered wrongly, and the cost is asserting a right in a room where you do not have one.
--- name: salary-negotiation-script-writer description: Writes the actual script for a salary negotiation, starting from the pay transparency law in force where the job is posted rather than from negotiation psychology. It establishes whether the employer must publish a range and whether it may ask your pay history, assembles employer-specific published evidence, sets a number with a stated basis, and scripts the exchanges that follow, from the recruiter screen and the pay-history question to the offer call and the written counter. This skill should be used when a recruiter asks for salary expectations, when a verbal offer has just been made, or when a job advert carries no salary and it is worth knowing whether that absence is lawful. --- # Salary negotiation script writer ## The claim this skill is built on Almost every salary negotiation guide is psychology plus phrasing. Anchor high. Never name the first number. Pause after they speak. Some of it is sound. None of it is what has changed. What has changed is that in a growing number of jurisdictions the employer is legally obliged to tell you the range, and legally barred from asking what you currently earn. Both rules invert the standard advice. If the employer must publish a number, the question of who anchors first is settled, and what remains is where inside the published band you sit and why. If it may not ask your pay history, the commonest way candidates lose a negotiation before it starts has been removed by statute, and volunteering the figure anyway hands it back. A script written in ignorance of the legal position leaves the strongest card unplayed. The opposite error is worse: asserting a right you do not have. Neither the UK nor Australia requires a salary range in a job advert, and a candidate who tells a British recruiter they are entitled to one has burned credibility on the first exchange. So the order here is: establish the legal position, gather the evidence, set the number and its basis, then write the lines. The order matters because the legal position decides which of the later branches is available at all. **This file is not legal advice.** It describes published rules with their jurisdiction and date attached. Where your situation turns on whether a rule binds a particular employer, take advice from someone qualified where you are. ## Step 1. Establish the legal position, before writing a single line Two facts decide the shape of the whole script: whether a range must be disclosed, and whether pay history may be asked. Answer both for where the job is posted and where the successful applicant would be employed, not for where you live. **Ontario, Canada, from 1 January 2026.** A publicly advertised job posting must state the expected compensation or a compensation range. The range may not exceed $50,000 in Canadian dollars, postings above $200,000 are exempt, and employers with fewer than 25 employees are exempt. Those thresholds are the negotiating context. The cap means a compliant Ontario range is narrow enough to be real information, and the exemption means that at senior levels the absence of a number is expected rather than evasive. **British Columbia, Canada, from 1 November 2023.** An employer must specify either the expected salary or wage, or the expected range, with no employee-count threshold, so it reaches small employers too. British Columbia also bans pay-history enquiries and protects employees from reprisal for disclosing their pay. Ontario requires the number, but no equivalent pay-history ban appears in its posting rules. Two neighbouring provinces, two different answers to the second question. **The European Union.** Directive (EU) 2023/970, the Pay Transparency Directive, had a transposition deadline of 7 June 2026. Article 5 gives applicants a right to information on the initial pay or its range, to be provided in a manner ensuring an informed and transparent negotiation. Article 5(2) is blunt: an employer shall not ask applicants about their pay history during their current or previous employment relationships. Two qualifications. First, the drafting of Article 5 is permissive. The information may be given "in a published job vacancy notice, prior to the job interview or otherwise". A published advert is one option, not the only one, so this is not a guaranteed advert disclosure. You may have to ask, and the right is to an answer before the interview. Second, transposition is incomplete. As at 30 August 2026, twelve of the twenty-seven member states had notified no national implementing measure at all: Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal. Several that did notify, including Sweden and Spain, notified only pre-existing law, and the Commission had not opened infringement proceedings. So a candidate in Germany or Ireland has materially different leverage from one in a member state that has legislated: a directive binds the member state, not the recruiter. Check what your own country has actually enacted before citing anything. **The United Kingdom does not require salary ranges in job adverts.** A verified negative from a complete read of the governing instruments, not an absence of evidence. **Australia does not require salary ranges in job adverts.** The only federal advertising rule is Fair Work Act section 536AA, which bans advertising a rate that would be unlawful and requires a rate only for pieceworkers. In the UK and Australia, asking for the range is a reasonable request, not an entitlement. Phrase it as one. ## Step 2. Establish what you can be asked, and what you may say The pay-history question and the pay-discussion right are separate rules and they do not travel together. Where the EU directive is transposed, and in British Columbia, the pay-history question is banned. Note the shape of that ban: it stops the employer asking, not you volunteering. The question gets rephrased into something innocent, such as what package you would be leaving behind, and answering the rephrase hands back the advantage the statute gave you. The right to discuss pay with other people differs sharply by jurisdiction, and by more than most guides admit. **Australia, from 7 December 2022.** Fair Work Act section 333B gives employees a positive right to disclose or not disclose their own pay, and to ask any other employee about theirs, including one at a different employer. Contract terms inconsistent with that right are of no effect, and including one is a civil remedy contravention. It is the strongest of the three and makes peer benchmarking directly usable. **The European Union, Article 7(5).** Workers shall not be prevented from disclosing their pay for the purpose of enforcing the principle of equal pay. **The United Kingdom, Equality Act 2010 section 77.** Much narrower than it is usually described. A pay-secrecy term is unenforceable only in so far as the disclosure is a relevant pay disclosure, meaning one made to find out whether pay differences connect to a protected characteristic. It is not a general right to discuss pay. ## Step 3. Gather evidence in tiers, strongest first Every number you say out loud needs a source, and the sources are not equal. **Tier 1, legally mandated disclosure.** The range in the posting, or the answer to an Article 5 information request where that applies. The only tier the employer has already agreed to. **Tier 2, published employer-specific data.** The tier almost no candidate uses, and the only one that is about that specific organisation. UK employers with 250 or more employees publish six gender pay gap figures annually. The snapshot date is 5 April for private and voluntary sector employers and 31 March for most public authorities, with deadlines of 4 April and 30 March respectively. Ireland's threshold dropped to 50 employees under S.I. No. 212 of 2025, and the reporting window tightened from six months to five months after the June relevant date. Australia's regulator publishes gender pay gaps for individual named employers of 100 or more, and in the 2024-25 data published on 3 March 2026 the mid-point of employer average total remuneration gaps was 11.2 per cent, with a median of 8.0 per cent, both down 0.9 percentage points year on year. Use them carefully: organisation-wide across all roles, so a figure proves nothing about the offer in front of you. What it tells you is whether banding is a live topic inside that organisation. **Tier 3, peer disclosure.** Governed by the rules in step 2: squarely permitted in Australia, including asking someone at another employer, and far more constrained in the UK than people assume. Treat whatever you learn as one data point from one person, because you rarely learn the whole package. **Tier 4, market aggregates.** Salary surveys and crowd-sourced sites, self-reported and rarely specific to your market. A private sanity check, never a stated basis. Two further facts are worth knowing before any banding conversation. Under EU Article 10 a gap of at least 5 per cent in any category of workers, if unjustified and not remedied within six months, forces a joint pay assessment. Under Article 18(2) the burden of proof shifts onto the employer where it has not met its pay transparency obligations. Do not deploy either as a threat. Their value is that they name the number at which a compliant employer's own machinery engages, which is context for how much room exists inside a band. ## Step 4. Set the number, and give it a basis A number without a basis is a wish, and it is negotiated against as one. Every figure you say is immediately followed by the sentence that sources it. Three bases are strong enough to state out loud. The posted range, plus where in it you are placing yourself and why. Evidence about the scope of this role from the interview, usually a system, a headcount, a budget or a problem they named. A competing offer, if one genuinely exists, stated as a fact rather than a threat. "Market rate" alone is not a basis. It invites the reply that their data says otherwise, and now you are arguing about datasets neither of you will share. Placement inside a published range depends on its width, which is why the Ontario cap matters. A compliant Ontario range is at most $50,000 wide, so asking for the upper part of it is a bounded, credible request. British Columbia sets no width cap, so a posted range there can be wide enough to carry no information at all. Do not negotiate against a very wide range. Move to the band question. ## Step 5. The decision rule: who names a number, and when **Branch A. A range is legally required and published.** Do not anchor first, anchor inside. Name your position within the published range and the basis for it. Anchoring above a published range without new information reads as not having read the posting. **Branch B. A range is legally required but missing, or so wide it carries no information.** Ask once, in writing, framed as information rather than compliance. The answer is the objective. Enforcement is a different process with a different cost and does not belong inside a live application. **Branch C. No obligation and no published range.** The UK, Australia, and any EU member state that has not transposed. Defer once, then anchor with a basis. Deferring twice reads as evasive and costs more than the anchor does. **Branch D. They ask your pay history where the question is banned.** Decline the question without declining the conversation, and redirect in the same breath to what you are looking for. Name the rule only if pressed a second time, once, neutrally. **Branch E. They ask your pay history where the question is lawful.** A real choice with a real cost either way. Answer with total compensation and immediately reframe why it is not the relevant number, or decline as a matter of practice and accept that some employers read a refusal as friction. Choose deliberately, not by reflex. **Branch F, when you cannot tell.** You do not know which law applies. A remote role, a contractor-of-record arrangement, a group with several entities, a posting on an international board with no stated place of work. Do not guess and do not assert. Ask one clarifying question, which employing entity and which location the contract would be with, and run Branch C until it is answered. Asserting a right that turns out not to apply is worse than never raising it. ## Step 6. The script **The pre-interview information request.** Where an Article 5 right applies: "Before we schedule, could you confirm the initial pay or the pay range for this role? I understand that is provided to applicants ahead of the interview." Where it does not: "Before we go further, could you tell me the budgeted range? It saves us both time if we are far apart." **The expectations question, Branch A.** "The posting gives a range. Based on the scope you have described, and the migration work you mentioned, I am looking at the upper part of it. If the band works differently in practice, tell me how and I will work within that." **The expectations question, Branch C.** Defer once: "I would rather understand the scope properly first. What has been budgeted for the role?" If asked again, anchor with the basis attached. Do not defer twice. **The pay-history question, Branch D.** "I would rather not go into my current pay, and my understanding is that is not something employers here ask applicants about. What I can tell you is what I am looking for in this role, and why." **The pay-history question, Branch E.** "My current total compensation is around that figure including bonus. It reflects a narrower remit than this role, so it is not the number I am working from. For this role I am at the figure I gave you." **The verbal offer.** Receive it and stop. "Thank you, that is good news. Could you send it in writing with the full package, and I will come back to you by Thursday." Nothing else. Negotiating on the call is negotiating without the details in front of you. **The written counter.** Three parts and no more. An acceptance signal, so they know they are closing rather than losing you. The number with its basis. One alternate lever, so there is a way to say yes that is not the salary line. **The band question.** "Which band or level is this role in, and where in that band does this offer sit?" It cannot be answered yes or no. If the offer is at the top of the band, the negotiation is no longer about salary, it is about level. ## Worked example A data engineer with six years of experience applies to a logistics software company through a public posting. The employer has about 90 employees, sits in Ontario, and posts $95,000 to $135,000. The candidate currently earns about $102,000 in another province. On the screening call the recruiter asks what they are paid now. Step 1. Ontario, in force since 1 January 2026, so the posting had to carry compensation or a range. The employer is over the 25-employee exemption and the posting is under $200,000, so no exemption applies. The stated range is $40,000 wide, inside the $50,000 cap, so this is a real band rather than a placeholder. Branch A. Step 2. The documented Canadian pay-history ban is British Columbia's, not Ontario's, so the candidate has no basis for saying the question is not permitted. Branch E, not Branch D. This is exactly where an imported script asserts a right that does not exist in this province. Step 3. Tier 1 is the posted range. Tier 2 is unavailable, since the UK and Australian publication regimes do not reach this employer. Tier 4 aggregates are checked privately, not quoted. Step 4. The ask is $128,000, in the upper part of the published range, sourced to the pipeline migration the hiring manager described on the second call and to the candidate having run one at comparable volume. Step 5. The pay-history question is answered under Branch E, framing the current figure as a narrower remit. Step 6. The verbal offer arrives at $115,000. The candidate asks for it in writing, then counters at $128,000 with the basis stated plus one alternate lever, and asks the band question. **Verdict: Branch A with a Branch E pay-history answer. Ask $128,000, sourced to the posted range and the migration scope, do not claim the pay-history question is prohibited, and get the band position in writing before accepting.** ## Failure modes **The imported right.** Quoting EU Article 5 at an employer in one of the twelve member states that had notified no implementing measure as at 30 August 2026. From the outside it looks like a candidate reciting a rule the recruiter has never heard of, followed by a polite non-answer. **The confident negative.** Telling a UK or Australian employer they are required to publish a range. They are not, they know they are not, and every later claim you make is discounted. **The unbounded range.** Treating a posted range of $80,000 to $190,000 as information and negotiating against its midpoint. The tell is a candidate arguing hard about a number the employer never treated as a commitment. **The volunteered anchor.** Being asked what package you are leaving behind, in a jurisdiction that banned the pay-history question, and answering. The statute stopped them asking directly. Nothing stopped the rephrase. **The naked number.** A figure with no sentence after it. It looks like a demand, it is countered as one, and the settlement lands near their number because yours never had a floor. **The gap-report misread.** Quoting an employer's published gender pay gap as though it described the offer on the table. Those figures are organisation-wide across every role, and using one as a role-level claim invites a correction that costs the credibility the evidence was meant to buy. **The stale script.** Reusing a script written for a different country or an earlier year. This area is moving quickly, transposition is still incomplete across the EU, and a script with no dates in it cannot tell you it has expired. ## What this skill does not do - It does not give legal advice and cannot tell you whether a specific employer is bound by a specific rule. That turns on the employing entity, the place of work and facts it cannot see. - It carries no salary data. It ranks evidence and says which tiers are weak, but it will not invent a market figure. - It does not cover the United States state by state, the largest and most fragmented body of pay transparency law here, nor public sector scales where there is often nothing to negotiate. - It does not handle equity, where the largest errors in senior offers happen. Vesting terms, exercise windows and dilution need someone who reads those documents for a living. - Its jurisdiction map is dated 30 August 2026. Every fact carries a date for that reason, and anything read long after it needs rechecking before it is quoted at an employer.
These skills all ask your assistant to check things against your actual codebase, your actual schema, your actual design system. Locul keeps that context current on its own, from the files you already have, on your machine. Mac and Windows, free to start.