Blog · Page 11
Field notes.
Page 11 of 31. Browse the archive of RFP workflows, grounded-AI architecture, and proposal operations notes.
Year in RFPs: 2025 — the data and the narrative
The canonical year-end synthesis. What moved in the RFP category in 2025, what did not, what the public data says about vendors and buyers, and three predictions for 2026 with the evidence behind them. 5,000 words, twenty-six sources.
The annual proposal-team retro template
The questions we ask at year-end and the format that surfaces what monthly retros miss. A 90-minute meeting that produces a durable artifact instead of a slide deck that gets archived and forgotten.
Grounded-AI regressions we caught in year one
Four regressions in our grounded-drafting pipeline this year. How we caught each one, how long it took to roll back, and the one we did not catch in time. Engineering notes, not a victory lap.
Year-one numbers we can share
The product metrics we're willing to post publicly after year one, the ones we aren't, and the reasoning behind each line. An honest ledger instead of a slide deck.
The end-of-year reading list for proposal operators
Fifteen links outside our bubble — books, long essays, research papers, category-adjacent writing. Not a proposal-industry reading list; the reading that makes proposal work feel new when you return to it in January.
The week between Christmas and New Year, for proposal teams
The slowest week of the year has a use. Five low-overhead rituals that cost an afternoon each, capture the year's learning, and set up the team for a clean January. What to do when nothing is landing.
The Christmas Day silent-inbox note
Nothing is shipping today. No buyer is responding. No clarification question is getting answered. This is the correct default, and here is why we built the system around it.
A Christmas Eve draft review note
Two drafts crossed my desk this morning, Christmas Eve. What they said, what they missed, and why the review still happened despite the date.
The security-questionnaire closeout list
Ten fields security teams should confirm before signing off on a DDQ. A single-page closeout checklist, written for the person whose name goes on the submission and whose audit exposure is real.
The prompt library behind grounded drafting
Seven named prompts, one kill-switch registry, a versioning scheme, and the governance pattern we use to keep prompt sprawl from becoming an outage. Engineering notes on how we actually run prompts in production.
An end-of-year letter to early customers
Short. What we shipped this year, what we did not, what we learned from you. No CTA, no pitch, no asking for anything. Just an accounting.
The 2025 proposal-tool hype cycle, mapped
Who peaked, who plateaued, who crashed, and who quietly held a line this year in the proposal-tools category. A data-grounded map of vendor posture across 2025, drawn from public reviews and pricing signals.
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