Composing a bid

The bid composition flow drafts your proposal documents from a planned outline. Unlike RFP composition, where you can dive in with just a description, bid composition is structured around an approved plan so the agent always knows what artifacts to produce, in what tone, and with what supporting evidence.

The full flow has three phases:

1. Setup interview — a short interview that produces a compose plan (artifact list + mode + tone + format settings).
2. Composition — the agent drafts each artifact in turn, pausing for review in guided mode.
3. Validation — a two-pass review (coverage + content) that runs automatically when composition finishes.

This page walks through phase 2 and how it links to the other two. You can also draft a bid in the AI Assistant and edit it there in an editor.

Before you start

Bid composition runs on a specific bid inside a procurement. Before you can launch it:

• The procurement must have its RFP documents uploaded.
• The bid must exist (you've created an entry like "Vendor X").
• The bid must have a setup interview completed and an approved compose plan.
• Your organization must have enough credits.

If you haven't done the setup interview yet, do that first. The composition page will redirect you back to setup if there's no approved plan.

What the agent has to work with

When you approve the plan, the agent gets:

• The RFP documents from the procurement
• The bid's purpose and notes (what you described in setup)
• The compose plan — artifact list, mode, tone, output formats, format strictness
• Library attachments you confirmed during setup (CVs, certifications, past projects, etc.). The system auto-pulls these into the agent's workspace at the start of the run.
• The prep checklist, if one exists. Under Submittable documents, each document the tender asks for is marked AI will draft or You must attach. The agent drafts the first kind. It never attaches files: certificates, signed declarations and other files under You must attach are yours to attach.

Documents are uploaded into the agent's sandbox at run start. Everything else lives in the database.

Buyer forms and manual steps

Where the RFP provides a fixed form or template for a section, you can tie that document to the RFP-provided form in the plan — the agent then fills the form rather than inventing its own structure.

The agent fills in the buyer's form without changing it. It writes only into blanks, empty answer cells and form controls such as checkboxes. The buyer's sheets, tables, formulas and fixed text stay as issued, and it adds no sheets or notes of its own. Before a filled XLSX or DOCX form is published, it is compared with the buyer's original; if the structure or fixed text changed, the agent has to redo it.

Where the form offers alternatives (for example "X or Y"), the agent ticks the right checkbox or strikes through the options that don't apply. It never deletes them. A value it doesn't know stays blank, and the agent tells you about it in its message instead of writing into the form.

Signing a document and attaching a file the agent can't produce are steps only you can do. The agent never writes that a document is signed or a file is attached unless that file is in the package. It marks each such step with a placeholder that names it, and the validator lists them as Manual step before submitting.

Composition modes

The mode you picked in the setup interview controls how the agent runs:

You can change the mode in the plan before approving. Once composition has started, the mode is fixed.

Running composition

Structured clarifications

During a run the agent often needs specific facts about your company — a registration number, a team size, a project reference date, a yes/no on whether you hold a particular certification. Rather than asking for these in free text, it presents a short structured form: a handful of typed fields (text, choice, number, date) for you to fill in. Complete the fields and submit, and composition continues with your answers baked in.

Structured clarifications keep the back-and-forth precise — the agent gets exactly the data it needs in the right shape, and you don't have to guess what format to type.

Your answers, and the replies you type in the clarification panel, are kept as your company's facts. The validator doesn't flag a claim that repeats them as unsubstantiated, and a later answer replaces an earlier one.

Documents and requirements

Every composed bid has a Documents tab that lists:

• AI-drafted documents from the plan (downloadable once published)
• You attach — files from the prep checklist that you must provide yourself (CVs, certificates, signed declarations, etc.). The agent cannot produce or attach these.

The bid is drafted against the RFP's extracted requirements. The Documents tab flags any mandatory requirement that isn't yet covered, so you can see your readiness at a glance before submitting. See RFP requirements for how the requirement set drives this.

This is the tab to use when you're getting close to submission and want to see what's still outstanding.

Downloading the package

Download any single document, or use Download all (ZIP) to export the whole bid package at once. The ZIP is named after the bidding company: your organization's confirmed company name for your own bid, otherwise the bid's vendor name. It includes a readiness summary of what's covered and what's still outstanding, so a reviewer can see the state of the bid without opening the app.

When you draft your own bid in a bid workspace (Your bid → Draft with AI), the footer of the Created documents step shows Versions and checks, Download draft package (ZIP) and Package instead. Package opens the Package tab of Your bid, where you check the bid before you submit it.

Pausing and resuming

The bid composition flow is fully pausable. If the agent stops to ask a question, the run shows status paused and the sandbox is preserved. You can answer hours or days later; a run that waits for you for 7 days without activity is stopped automatically. Resume by responding in the clarification panel.

If the run fails for any reason (system error, model timeout), it shows status failed with an error message and a Continue button. Click Continue to retry from where the run stopped — your already-drafted artifacts are preserved.

While the agent waits for you, the compose page shows Cancel session. Cancelling stops the run after you confirm, so the bid can start a new session; documents already created stay. A cancelled run, or one stopped after 7 days, shows status failed, and Continue picks it up again. It is not charged unless you continue it and it completes. The setup interview has the same Cancel session button; after cancelling it, Retry starts a new interview.

Credit cost

Bid composition costs depend on the number of artifacts in the plan and how many turns the agent takes per artifact. Typical ranges:

The setup interview and the validator pass are billed separately. See credits and pricing for the full breakdown.

Next steps

• After validation, see compose validation for what to do with the findings.
• When the bid is final, you can run bid analysis on it to see how it compares against the RFP through the analysis pipeline (a useful self-check before submission).
• See the setup interview page for the planning phase that comes before composition.