Roommate Agreement

Roommate Agreement Skill

No flat share is ruined by rent. They're ruined by the fourth "gentle reminder" note about dishes, the partner who's there five nights but pays zero, the mystery utilities split, and the moment someone moves out mid-lease and everyone discovers nobody agreed what that means. A roommate agreement isn't corporate paranoia — it's deciding the annoying things while everyone still likes each other, which is the only time they're easy. This skill writes that one-pager in human language, and scripts the slightly awkward house meeting that turns it from a document into a deal.

What This Skill Produces

• A one-page agreement covering the eight fights before they happen: money, chores, guests & partners, noise & shared space, food & supplies, temperature (the thermostat war is real), communication norms, and the exit plan
• A house meeting script: how to propose this without sounding like HR, the questions to actually discuss, and how to handle the roommate who says "we don't need this, we're chill"
• Decision defaults for the classic stalemates, offered as menu options (chore wheel vs zones vs hire-a-cleaner-split)
• A revisit clause: when the agreement gets re-opened (new person, partner-creep threshold crossed, someone's income changes)

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• Who's in the flat: how many, relationships (strangers? friends? couple + one?), whose name is on the lease — lease-liability asymmetry shapes the exit plan
• Current sore points if any (or "we haven't moved in yet" — the best case)
• Money facts: rent split today, utilities handling, any shared subscriptions
• House realities: sizes of rooms (equal-split of unequal rooms is fight #1), work-from-home patterns, existing partner situations

Framework: the eight fights, pre-decided

1. Money — rent split with reasoning (equal? by room size/en-suite? — name the method so resentment has nowhere to live) · utilities: one owner per bill, settle monthly via app, receipts visible · shared kitty for house stuff · late-payment protocol before it's personal.
2. Chores — pick a system, any system: wheel, zones, or pay-to-escape (cleaner split). The rule that matters: standards are the agreement, not effort — define "kitchen is done" in one sentence. Dishes get their own line: the sink is not a queue.
3. Guests & partners — the partner-creep threshold, decided kindly and in advance: N nights/week for M weeks = conversation about contributing. Overnight-guest heads-up norms; parties need everyone's yes.
4. Noise & shared space — quiet hours by schedule reality (who has 8am shifts?) · headphones threshold · the living room is nobody's second bedroom.
5. Food & supplies — labeled = yours, unlabeled = ask; the shared-staples list (and its kitty); the "I ate your leftovers" repair norm (replace within 48h, no trial).
6. Temperature & fabric of the flat — thermostat range + who pays for deviance (heating is money, see fight #1); what needs a house vote (furniture, décor in shared space, pets, smoking anything).
7. Communication — the house channel and what belongs there; the anti-passive-aggression pact: issues get said to faces (or the channel) within a week, or they expire — no note-leaving, no six-month ledgers.
8. The exit — notice period to the house (not just the landlord) · who finds/approves the replacement · deposit handling and the damage-vs-wear line · what happens to shared purchases. Cross-check against the actual lease; the agreement can't override it, only fill its silences.

Output Format

# [Address] house agreement — v1, [date]
[Eight sections, each 2-4 plain-language lines, decided not vague]
Signed-ish: [names] · Revisit when: [triggers]

## The house meeting (20 minutes, snacks mandatory)
[Opening line that isn't corporate · the 5 real discussion questions ·
handling "we're chill, we don't need this" · how to end with agreement]

## Stalemate menu
[For each classic deadlock: 2-3 workable options to pick from]

Quality Checks

• Every section ends in a decision or a named default — "be considerate" appears nowhere
• The partner-creep threshold has actual numbers in it
• The exit plan was checked against lease reality (joint liability named if present)
• Tone check: reads like flatmates wrote it on a good day, not like a landlord or an HR portal
• The meeting script includes the "we're chill" rebuttal: chill flats are chill because the defaults are agreed

Anti-Patterns

• Do not write legalese — this document works by being read, remembered, and quotable in one line ("sink's not a queue!")
• Do not encode one roommate's preferences as house law — every contested default is presented as a menu, decided at the meeting
• Do not skip the exit section because move-in day feels optimistic — it's the section that saves the friendship later
• Do not position the agreement as distrust; frame stays "deciding while we like each other"
• Do not offer legal advice on leases/deposits — flag lease conflicts and point at [[lease-decoder]] and, for deposits, [[security-deposit-recovery]]

Related

[[lease-decoder]] before signing the lease itself; [[security-deposit-recovery]] when the exit goes wrong; [[working-agreements]] — the office version of the same peace treaty.