In preview: proposal templates v2 with custom sections
Template inheritance replaces copy. Sections defined once, customized per tenant, updated in one place. In preview behind the templates feature flag while the marketed Proposal Builder surface catches up.
Proposal templates v2 are in preview this week behind a feature flag. The short version: templates now inherit. A section defined on a parent template is usable on any child template without copying the content. Updates to the parent propagate. Tenants can override specific sections on a child template without losing the connection to the parent. The template surface itself isn’t called out yet on the Proposal Builder page — it builds on the section-level assignments and approval gates that page describes — and we will fold it in once the migration story for parallel templates is fully documented.
Why this is a big deal for anyone who has lived with a content library for longer than 12 months: copy-based templates drift. Someone edits a section in template A. Templates B, C, and D still have the old version. Six months later nobody remembers which version was right. The team ships proposals with inconsistent boilerplate, and the inconsistency reads to reviewers as unprofessional.
What changed
Template hierarchy. Every tenant has a default template (“standard proposal, 2026”). Customers can create child templates for verticals, deal types, or specific buyers. A child template inherits all sections from its parent unless it explicitly overrides them.
Section-level inheritance. Inheritance is per-section, not per-template. A child template can override the executive summary section while inheriting every other section as-is. The override is visible in the editor — there is a “this section is customized” badge so editors know they are working on a local copy, not the parent.
Single-point updates. An edit to a parent-template section propagates to every child that inherits it, on the next draft. Children that have overridden that section are unaffected. A diff view shows, per tenant, which sections are inherited and which are locally overridden.
Version history. Every template version is saved. Reverting to a prior version of a section is a single click. The version record includes who changed what and when.
The problem it solves
Sparrow Genie has documented that content-library failures usually come from unclear ownership and stale content. Proposal templates inherit the same problem when they are managed by copy — nobody owns “the boilerplate,” everyone owns their own divergent version, and the team ships drift.
Template inheritance does not fix content ownership on its own. What it does is remove the lie that the copies are synchronized. When a parent section is the source of truth, an update to the parent is an update to every downstream proposal. When a child section is explicitly overridden, the override is visible and auditable.
What the UI looks like
In the template editor, a side panel shows the inheritance tree. A section with a blue badge is inherited. A section with a green badge is customized. Hovering either badge shows the last-changed date and the editor. Switching between inherited and customized on a section is a single action and is reversible.
The draft pipeline picks the resolved template at draft time — it walks the inheritance tree and assembles the final section set. Draft output is unchanged; no existing workflow needs to adapt.
What we did not change
Existing templates were migrated to the new model with no breaking change. Every existing template became a “standalone” template with no parent, which is functionally identical to how they worked before. Tenants that never create a child template see no difference. Tenants that want inheritance can opt in by creating a parent/child pair from the template settings page.
What is next
The analytics view — which sections are most frequently customized per tenant, which customizations are most common across tenants — is in the build log queue. That view is useful because it surfaces candidates for promotion: if 14 tenants all override the executive-summary intro with similar language, the parent template is wrong, and the default should move.
Questions on the rollout go to support. The feature is live for all tenants as of today.