Your First Proposal | Getting Started
Go from a client brief to a polished proposal in under 5 minutes.
3 min read
What you'll learn
- How to input a client brief
- What the AI does at each stage
- How to review and edit the result
- How to export and share your proposal
Input your brief
From the dashboard, click New Proposal. You have three ways to input a client brief:
Paste text
The simplest option — copy the client's brief from an email, message, or document and paste it into the text area.
Upload a file
Drag and drop a PDF, DOCX, or TXT file (up to 10MB). Ergate extracts the text automatically.
Fetch from URL
Paste a URL to a job posting or project brief. Ergate fetches and extracts the content.
Don't worry about formatting — Ergate handles messy briefs. The more detail you include, the better the proposal.
Watch the AI work
After submitting your brief, Ergate processes it in four stages:
- Analyzing — extracts requirements, identifies risks, flags ambiguities
- Scoping — creates deliverables, estimates timeline and pricing
- Writing — generates a complete professional proposal
- Scoring — evaluates the proposal quality across five dimensions (Solo plan and above)
You'll see a streaming progress indicator as each stage completes. The whole process typically takes 30-60 seconds.
Review the result
Your proposal opens in a two-column view:
- Left side — the proposal text in a rich text editor
- Right side — tabbed panels for Analysis, Pricing, Timeline, and Score
Analysis tab
Review what the AI found in the brief:
- Requirements — explicit, implicit, and nice-to-have items
- Risks — flagged by severity (critical, high, medium, low)
- Ambiguities — things that need clarification from the client
- Clarifying questions — suggested questions to send to the client
Pricing tab
An interactive calculator with editable line items. Toggle between low, mid, and high estimates. Add or remove items as needed.
Timeline tab
Visual timeline showing project phases and milestones with duration estimates.
Score tab
A 0-100 score evaluating your proposal on clarity, completeness, persuasiveness, risk coverage, and professionalism. Includes specific suggestions for improvement.
Edit your proposal
Click anywhere in the proposal text to edit. The toolbar supports formatting (bold, italic, headings, lists, links) and you can restructure sections as needed.
Export and share
When you're happy with the result:
- Export — download as PDF or DOCX (DOCX requires Solo plan or higher)
- Share — generate a public link with optional password protection and expiry date