Sales proposal

Proposal

Assembles proposal.md for one qualified opportunity from context that already exists in the workspace.

This skill is deliberately an assembly step, not a writing step. The bottleneck in proposal work is not prose — it is finding the approved scope language, the current pricing model, and a client result you are actually allowed to cite. A repo with versioned, approved firm facts is the fix for that, so this skill reads and composes rather than inventing.

Proposal Gate

Do not start until all of the following hold. See AGENTS.md for the canonical gate.

1. !_discovery.md exists in the opportunity folder.
2. brief_quality is workable or strong.
3. bid_decision is bid or conditional. For conditional, the bid_condition must be met — say so explicitly, or stop.
4. workspace/firm/services/{service}.md exists and has a service_type.
5. The ICP and persona files referenced by the brief exist.

If any fails, stop and name the missing piece. Run sales-discovery-brief or sales-bid-qualification first.

Proof Gate

Every client result, metric, name, or quote in the proposal must resolve to a record in workspace/firm/proof/{slug}.md. See the Proof Gate in AGENTS.md.

• List every record you rely on in frontmatter proof_refs.
• A record with client_public: false may be cited as an anonymized description. Never write that client's name.
• Quote a client only from a record with quote_approved: true.
• If no relevant record exists, write the proof section with what is true — process, method, team experience, comparable public work — and add proof_needed: true to frontmatter. Do not describe a result the firm cannot evidence.

A proposal with an unsupported number is worse than one with fewer numbers. The number will be quoted back during negotiation, and the firm will have to defend it.

Length

Target 6–8 pages, roughly 2,000–2,500 words. Proposals in that range close at roughly twice the rate of 20-page documents. The validator enforces only the ceiling: it fails above 3,000 words.

Shorter is not a problem. The worked example in tool-weasyprint lands at about 1,900 words over five pages including the cover, and it covers every required section. Never pad a proposal to reach a page count — that is the failure mode this rule exists to prevent.

Length discipline is not cosmetic. A long proposal signals that the firm did not know which parts mattered, and it moves the decision to whoever has time to read it — usually not the economic buyer.

Required Structure

In this order. The validator checks that each heading exists and is non-empty.

## Situation
## Outcomes
## Approach
## Scope
## Out of scope
## Assumptions
## Change control
## Proof
## Commercials
## Next step

Section-by-section rules, worded examples, and the pricing table format: references/proposal-structure.md.

Three of these are mandatory for a commercial reason, not a formatting one:

• ## Out of scope — most firms deliver unbilled out-of-scope work every month, and a written exclusion list is the cheapest defense that exists.
• ## Assumptions — every dependency on the client that, if unmet, changes the timeline or the price.
• ## Change control — how a change gets priced and approved, agreed before it is needed rather than during the argument.

Scope lives inside the proposal. Do not create a separate scope file; a second document drifts from the first and the client only ever reads one of them.

Commercials

One pricing table. Not three scattered mentions, not a price in prose.

price_model in frontmatter must match service_type in the service file. A retainer service priced as a fixed project, or the reverse, means either the service definition or the proposal is wrong — stop and resolve which.

Options are allowed, and usually help: two or three tiers let the buyer choose scope instead of choosing whether to proceed. Keep them in the same table, and mark the recommended one.

State what the price includes, the payment schedule, and how long it holds.

Workflow

1. Load context

Read, in order: brief, firm profile, service file, ICP, persona, then workspace/firm/proof/ for records matching this service and ICP.

2. Select proof

Choose at most three proof records — the closest by service, then by ICP. Note each record's client_public and quote_approved flags before writing anything.

Three relevant results beat eight loosely related ones. The buyer is checking whether the firm has solved this specific problem, not counting logos.

3. Open in the buyer's language

## Situation reuses the quote from ## Problem in the buyer's words in the brief. Do not paraphrase it into vendor language. The buyer should recognize their own words in the first paragraph.

4. Write outcomes before approach

State what will be true when the work is done, then how the firm gets there. Approach before outcome reads as a methodology pitch.

5. Draw the boundary

Fill ## Scope, ## Out of scope, ## Assumptions, ## Change control. Be specific in the exclusions: name the adjacent work a client would reasonably assume is included, and say it is not.

6. Price it

One table, price_model matching the service, payment schedule, validity.

7. Close with one next step

One action, dated, low friction. Not "let us know your thoughts".

8. Validate

scripts/validate-proposal.sh workspace/sales/opportunities/{opportunity}/proposal.md

Treat a non-zero exit as a hard stop.

9. Render the PDF

Clients do not read Markdown. After the validator passes, render with tool-weasyprint:

uv run --with markdown --with weasyprint python3 \
  .agents/skills/tool-weasyprint/scripts/md-to-pdf.py \
  workspace/sales/opportunities/{opportunity}/proposal.md

Validate first, render second. The PDF is what leaves the building, so a Proof Gate violation has to be caught while it is still a Markdown file.

Output goes to tmp/pdf/ and is gitignored. Do not commit it — proposal.md is the versioned record, and a committed PDF is a binary that drifts from its source.

Optional cover fields, read only for the PDF and never for the workflow: title, subtitle, firm, client, date, valid_until, reference, footer. Use display names here, not slugs. All other frontmatter is stripped from the rendered document, so internal fields such as proof_refs stay out of the client's copy.

10. Record the send

Set status: sent and sent: {date} when it goes out. Then sales-outcome-log records what happened, which is what makes win rate computable later.

Output

workspace/sales/opportunities/{account}--{service}--{YYYY-MM}/proposal.md

Frontmatter:

---
opportunity: acme-industrial--platform-migration--2026-07
account: acme-industrial
service: platform-migration
icp: mid-market-manufacturing
persona: cto-mid-market
price_model: project            # must match service_type
currency: EUR
proof_refs:
  - northwind-release-automation
  - anonymized-manufacturer-migration
proof_needed: false
status: draft                   # draft | sent | withdrawn
generated_at: 2026-07-25
sent:
---

Not A Contract

The output is a commercial proposal, not a legal agreement. It does not constitute legal advice. Tell the user to have counsel review terms, liability, IP, and data processing before signing — the same guardrail sales-prospecting-sequence applies to email compliance.

Confidentiality

Proposals contain pricing and the proof library contains unpublished client results. Both are committed to git by default. Before the first proposal, confirm the user understands this and wants it — see SECURITY.md for the gitignore option if the repo is or will become public.

Testing Requirements

1. Run against an opportunity with bid_decision: pending; confirm refusal.
2. Generate a proposal citing a record with client_public: false; confirm the client name appears nowhere and the validator passes.
3. Add a metric to ## Proof that no referenced record supports; confirm the validator fails.
4. Set price_model to something other than the service's service_type; confirm the validator fails.
5. Delete ## Out of scope; confirm the validator fails.
6. Confirm word count lands in 2,000–2,500 and the validator passes.
7. Render the PDF and confirm no frontmatter field appears in it — especially proof_refs and the internal slugs.

Reference Files

File	Content
references/proposal-structure.md	Section rules, pricing table format, worked examples

Related Skills

Skill	When
sales-discovery-brief	Produces the brief; run first
sales-bid-qualification	Must record bid or conditional before this runs
sales-outcome-log	Records won/lost and creates the proof record on a win
tool-weasyprint	Renders the sendable PDF; see its examples/ for a worked proposal
marketing-content-case-study	Turns a proof record into a public case study