--- name: al-447-get-your-money-back-from-a-company-that-won-t-pay-have-an description: "On Oct 30, 2026 Phillip Jackson, who builds the commerce media company Future Commerce, posted on X that he had hired the AI agent service Muse to sue a company on his behalf in small claims court. By his account, the company offered a settlement within 20 minutes of being served, paid him within ten days with extra compensation for his recovery costs, and Muse then filed a motion to dismiss that the court accepted. The post was bookmarked over a thousand times, and replies pointed out that court filing and service fees still apply. This is one person's case, small claims rules and limits differ by court, and an AI isn't a lawyer, so check your local court's rules before filing. The prompt below gets any AI assistant to prepare the case so you can send a demand letter first and file yourself if needed. Use when the user wants help with small claims preparation (legal & compliance) for a small business." --- # Get your money back from a company that won't pay: have an AI assistant build a small claims case file (timeline, evidence list, demand letter, filing checklist) so you can file it yourself without a lawyer On Oct 30, 2026 Phillip Jackson, who builds the commerce media company Future Commerce, posted on X that he had hired the AI agent service Muse to sue a company on his behalf in small claims court. By his account, the company offered a settlement within 20 minutes of being served, paid him within ten days with extra compensation for his recovery costs, and Muse then filed a motion to dismiss that the court accepted. The post was bookmarked over a thousand times, and replies pointed out that court filing and service fees still apply. This is one person's case, small claims rules and limits differ by court, and an AI isn't a lawyer, so check your local court's rules before filing. The prompt below gets any AI assistant to prepare the case so you can send a demand letter first and file yourself if needed. ## Inputs to collect first Ask the user for anything below that they haven't already given you. Don't guess missing facts. - City, province or state, country - Company or person, address - Plain-language story with dates - Amount - Reason - Any costs, e.g. repair quotes, fees - Receipts, emails, texts, photos, contract - CHECK ## Instructions Do the task below with the user's inputs in place of each [bracket]. Help me prepare a small claims case. I'm in [city, province or state, country]. The other side is [company or person, address]. What happened: [plain-language story with dates]. What I'm owed: [amount] for [reason], plus [any costs, e.g. repair quotes, fees]. Evidence I have: [receipts, emails, texts, photos, contract]. 1) Build a dated timeline of the facts from what I gave you, and flag any gap or claim I can't back with evidence as [CHECK]. 2) List the evidence I should bring, in order, and what each item proves. 3) Write a firm, polite demand letter giving them [14] days to pay before I file, with the exact amount and how to pay. 4) Tell me which small claims court likely handles this, the usual claim limit and filing fees there, and how the other side gets served, and mark anything you can't confirm for my court as [CHECK] with where to verify it (the court's website or clerk). 5) Draft the claim description in plain words (what happened, why they owe it, what I want). 6) List 3 likely defences they could raise and how I'd answer each. 7) If they offer a settlement, give me a checklist for accepting it safely (amount, deadline, in writing, how and when I withdraw or dismiss the claim). Don't send or file anything; I'll review and do that myself, and I'll ask a lawyer or legal clinic if the amount is large or the case is complicated. ## Safety checks (share these with the user) - Check every figure, price and total against your own records before anything is sent, posted or booked. A person approves refunds, discounts, payments and price changes. - Anything legal, tax or compliance-related is a first draft for a qualified person to check. It is not professional advice, and clause references and deadlines must be checked against the source. - Read and edit the draft before it reaches a customer or goes public. If you later automate this prompt, start with "draft and notify me", not "send automatically". - Check names, dates, numbers and any claim against your own source material before you use the answer. AI can misread or invent details. - Say clearly which parts need a person to review or approve before anything is sent, paid, posted or filed. ## About this skill - Works with: Muse, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini - Based on this real-world example: https://x.com/philwinkle/status/2116180121447014434 - Free prompt from AgentPlaybook Real Estate: https://agentic-library.netlify.app/prompt/al-447-get-your-money-back-from-a-company-that-won-t-pay-have-an-ai/ - To install in an agent that supports Agent Skills, save this file as SKILL.md in a folder with the same name as `name` above (for example in your skills directory). Install steps for Claude.ai, Claude Code, Cursor and Codex: https://agentic-library.netlify.app/skills/