Setup interview
The short interview that produces a compose plan before bid composition starts.
The setup interview is the planning phase of bid composition. Instead of jumping straight into drafting, the agent first sits down with you to figure out what to draft and how — the result is an editable compose plan you approve before the heavy lifting begins.
This pattern keeps composition predictable: by the time the drafting agent starts running, both you and the agent agree on what the bid will contain.
RFP composition doesn't use the setup interview. It has its own Procurement design step, where you shape the procurement with the agent and approve it before drafting — see composing an RFP.
When you'll do it
You run a setup interview every time a bid needs composition. It's the entry point — the bid composition page redirects to setup if no approved plan exists yet.
You can also re-run a setup interview if you want to change the plan after composition has already started or finished. The newer plan supersedes the older one.
Before the interview runs, the app extracts the RFP's requirements so the plan can be built against concrete obligations. If requirements haven't been extracted yet, you'll be asked to review them first. See RFP requirements.
What the interview asks
The setup interview runs on a faster, lighter model than the main composition agent, in its own sandbox with the RFP documents loaded. It's structured to answer five questions:
- What artifacts should the bid contain? A list of sections / documents the composition agent will draft. Typical examples: technical proposal, qualifications, financial offer, project plan, references, certifications.
- What composition mode? Autopilot or guided — controls how interactive the drafting phase will be. Guided is adaptive: it pauses after each artifact and asks for details only when the plan genuinely needs them.
- What tone? Formal, technical, sales, concise, or unspecified.
- What output formats? PDF, DOCX, etc. — affects how the agent structures content for export.
- How strictly must the bid follow RFP-provided templates? Strict (always use the template), flexible (adapt where needed), mixed (case by case).
The agent reads the RFP first, then asks you questions to fill in the gaps. Most interviews take 5–10 minutes.
Running the interview
Open the setup screen
From the procurement, open the bid you want to compose. Click the Setup entry in the workflow nav. If the bid doesn't have a plan yet, you'll land on the setup welcome screen.
Add any instructions
There's an optional free-text Additional instructions for the agent field at the top. This is where you pass any vendor facts or guidance you want the agent to know: which sections you definitely want, which RFP sections to highlight, what tone is right for this client, relevant company facts, anything that sets context. Anything you write here is auto-saved as the bid's notes.
You don't have to fill this in — leaving it blank just means the agent will ask more questions during the interview. But the more context you give upfront, the faster the interview goes and the better the plan comes out.
Click Start
Starting the interview launches the agent. It reads the RFP, then begins asking you questions one at a time in the clarification panel. Type each answer and click Send Response to continue.
Review the proposed plan
When the agent finishes, the page renders the compose plan. The plan has two parts:
- Plan-level settings — mode, tone, format strictness, output formats, whether to include optional materials. All editable while the plan is in
draftingstatus. - Document list — the documents the agent proposes to draft. You can edit any of them, add new ones, remove ones you don't need, or mark a document
skipped(and Unskip to bring it back). See Tuning each document below for everything you can set per document.
Confirm or reject library suggestions
If your organization library has documents the agent thinks are relevant (matching CVs, certifications, past projects, etc.), they appear as library suggestions attached to the relevant artifacts. For each suggestion you can:
- Confirm — the document gets pulled into the composition workspace at run start. The agent can read it and reference it.
- Reject — the suggestion is removed from the plan.
Only confirmed suggestions are auto-pulled. Anything you skip stays in the library but won't influence composition.
Approve the plan
When the plan looks right, click Approve plan. This locks the plan, creates the bid composition run, and kicks off bid composition.
Once approved, the plan becomes immutable. If you need to change something, you can run a new setup interview, which produces a new plan that supersedes the previous one.
Tuning each document
While the plan is in drafting status, you control the document set precisely. You can add, edit, or remove individual planned documents. Each document carries its own settings:
- Title — the document name shown in the published bid.
- Mode — how it's structured: free form (open prose), semi-structured (sections and headings), supporting (wraps reference material), strict template (mirrors a fixed RFP template), or interactive (clickable HTML output).
- Format — the file type: Markdown, DOCX, XLSX, or HTML.
- Position — its order in the published set; lower numbers come first.
- Risk level — how much attention this document needs.
- Notes — guidance the agent should follow when drafting it.
- RFP source form — an optional buyer-issued form from the RFP package that a strict-template document fills.
- Requirements covered — a checklist that links specific RFP requirements to this document, so the agent knows exactly what it must satisfy here.
- Source providers — which sources the agent may draw on for this document: RFP documents, organization library, previous RFPs, tender catalogue, market research, uploaded documents, web, and regulatory references. Disable any the agent shouldn't use for this particular document.
Plan statuses
The plan moves through these states:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
drafting | Agent has finished the interview and is showing you the plan. You can edit any field. |
approved | You clicked Approve. Plan is locked and composition is running or complete. |
superseded | You ran another setup interview, and a newer plan replaced this one. |
Artifact statuses
Each artifact has its own status that changes as composition progresses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
planned | In the plan, not yet drafted. |
drafted | Agent produced a draft. (You'll mostly see this only briefly during composition; it transitions to published once the draft is committed.) |
published | Drafted and the linked Document is live in the bid's documents list. |
needs_review | Validator flagged this artifact and it's waiting for your feedback. |
skipped | You marked it skipped in the plan. The agent doesn't draft it. |
Editing the plan after approval
The plan itself is locked once approved, but most decisions show up inside the composition flow:
- Want to change mode? Run a new setup interview.
- Want to skip an artifact mid-run? Pause the run (in guided mode), or wait until validation, then mark it skipped via a revision pass.
- Want to add a new artifact? Run a new setup interview and approve the new plan.
In practice, plan-edits-after-approval are rare. Most users iterate through validation feedback instead.
Credit cost
The setup interview itself runs on a cheaper model and is short — typical cost is 0.5–2 credits. The composition run is billed separately.
If you cancel during the interview (close the tab without approving), you're only charged for the work the agent did up to that point.
Tips
- Be specific in the instructions field. "Strong technical writing, emphasize our healthcare experience" is much more useful than "make it good".
- Confirm only library docs that actually fit. The agent treats every confirmed attachment as something it should integrate. Confirming a CV that's not relevant adds noise.
- Skip artifacts you don't need. If the RFP suggests a section that doesn't apply to your bid, mark it skipped before approving. It'll save credits during composition.
- Re-run the interview if your strategy changes. A second interview is cheaper than re-doing composition.