How the AI Works | Proposals
A deep dive into the four-stage AI pipeline that turns a client brief into a complete, scored proposal.
4 min read
What you'll learn
- How the four-stage pipeline processes your brief
- What each stage produces
- How custom prompts and templates influence the output
- How long generation takes
The four-stage pipeline
When you submit a brief, Ergate processes it through four sequential AI stages. Each stage builds on the output of the previous one, producing increasingly refined results. You'll see real-time progress via streaming updates as each stage runs.
Stage 1: Analysis
The AI reads your brief and extracts structured intelligence:
- Requirements — categorized as explicit (clearly stated), implicit (reasonably inferred), and nice-to-have
- Risks — flagged by severity: critical, high, medium, or low
- Ambiguities — areas where the brief is unclear or contradictory
- Red flags — potential issues like unrealistic timelines, budget mismatches, or scope creep indicators
- Clarifying questions — suggested questions you can send to the client before finalizing the proposal
Review the Analysis tab before sending your proposal. The clarifying questions are especially useful — sending them to your client shows thoroughness and helps avoid surprises later.
Stage 2: Scoping
Using the analysis results, the AI builds the operational backbone of your proposal:
- Deliverables — concrete work items grouped into logical phases
- Phases — project stages with dependencies and ordering
- Timeline — estimated duration for each phase and the overall project
- Pricing — line items with quantities, rates, and subtotals based on your default hourly rate and pricing model
The scoping stage uses your profile settings (industry, skills, hourly rate, pricing model) to produce estimates that match how you actually work and charge.
Stage 3: Writing
The writing stage generates the complete proposal text in polished markdown:
- Executive summary
- Understanding of the project
- Proposed approach and methodology
- Deliverables breakdown
- Timeline overview
- Pricing summary
- Terms and next steps
If you selected a template when creating the proposal, the AI enforces that template's structure during writing — combining your proven format with fresh, tailored content.
The writing style matches the tone you selected during onboarding (Professional, Friendly, Technical, or Creative). You can always edit the text afterward.
Stage 4: Scoring
The final stage evaluates the generated proposal and produces a quality score from 0 to 100 across five dimensions:
- Clarity — how easy the proposal is to understand
- Completeness — whether all requirements are addressed
- Persuasiveness — how compelling the value proposition is
- Risk coverage — whether risks are acknowledged and mitigated
- Professionalism — overall polish and tone
The score includes specific, actionable suggestions for improvement. Learn more in the Proposal Score guide.
Scoring requires a Solo plan or higher. Free plan users can upgrade in Settings → Billing to unlock scoring.
Custom prompts and skills
You can customize what the AI does at each stage:
- Custom prompts — override the built-in instructions for any pipeline stage with your own prompts. Manage these in Settings → AI Prompts.
- Pipeline skills — inject specialized instructions (compliance requirements, pricing methodologies, industry frameworks) into any stage. Manage these at Skills.
When generating a proposal, you can select specific prompts and activate skills per stage for fine-grained control over the output.
How long does it take?
The full pipeline typically completes in under 5 minutes, depending on the length and complexity of the brief. You'll see a streaming progress indicator showing which stage is currently running, along with real-time log messages.
Each proposal generation counts toward your monthly limit. Check your current usage in Settings → Billing.
After generation
Once all four stages complete, your proposal moves to Ready status and opens in the proposal editor. From there you can review, edit, rescore, export, or share it.