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RFP Operations
RFP Operations finds government bids that fit your business. It searches federal and state and local sources, scores every opportunity against what you sell, and brings you only the strong matches to pursue or pass. When you pursue one, it can draft the proposal for you to review. It never submits a bid.
The room is # rfp-ops, and its teammate is Rory. Rory finds RFPs, brings you the calls only you can make, and drafts proposals. Rory is listed under Team in the sidebar, and you message Rory in the room.
What it does for you
- Searches federal listings (including those posted on SAM.gov) and state, local and education bids in one search.
- Scores each opportunity from 0 to 100 against what you sell, and shows you the reasons.
- Checks each state and local link and deadline before showing it to you.
- Tracks every opportunity from new to won or lost.
- Drafts proposals and builds a compliance matrix from the solicitation's requirements.
What you need
- One sentence about what you sell, and to whom. Every score is measured against it.
- A Pencel account, signed in. Searches run on Pencel's shared access to the bid sources, so there are no keys to set up. You can add your own keys later.
- AI access: credits on a Pencel plan or your own API key. See Accounts, plans and credits.
- Optional: Gmail connected, if you want to email bid briefs to your team.
Set it up
From Home
- On Home, in the What should Pencel find for you? card, choose Find government RFPs.
- Answer What does your company sell, and to whom? in a full sentence. Be specific, for example: "We build AI traffic-monitoring sensors for state DOTs and city transportation departments."
- Optional: fill in What looks similar, but you'd never bid?, for example "household moving". Pencel saves it as a rule and filters those bids out.
- Click Start scanning.
Pencel installs RFP Operations and starts one search across every government source. A thorough first search usually takes 4 to 10 minutes. A Finding RFPs that fit you card on Home shows its progress, and you can follow along in # rfp-ops. When it finishes, the strongest fits appear on Home and in the room, ready for you to pursue or pass.
Answer the follow-up cards
A few short cards then appear on Home. Each takes seconds and sharpens every future score.
| Card | What you tell it |
|---|---|
| Which registrations do you hold? | Small business, 8(a), WOSB, SDVOSB, HUBZone, State MBE/DBE, or None of these. A matching set-aside is worth up to 15 points of every score. |
| What contract sizes are worth your time? | $25K to $100K, $100K to $1M, $1M to $5M, $5M+, and optionally No bids under $50K. |
| Where you can deliver, and how much runway you need | Nationwide or a list of states, plus the minimum days you need to respond: No minimum, 7, 14 or 30 days. |
| Confirm what you sell | Shows up when Pencel researched your company and found likely facts. Click ✓ Confirm on what's right and ✕ Not us on what isn't. |
Your answers are saved as confirmed facts, and every search after that uses them.
From Team
You can also install it from Team ▸ Add a teammate (see Ready-made Rooms). Before the first search, answer the room's first question about what you sell and to whom. Then click Search for RFPs just above the message box.
Your day to day
One search for everything
To search now, click Search for RFPs just above the message box, or type / and pick it. Federal and state and local sources are searched together, and Rory reports back once, when the whole search is done. While a search is starting or running, a line under the room header shows it, with Stop.
Check on your searches
Open the room's Activity tab. The Searches section at the top shows:
- Last search: when it ran and how many new opportunities it found.
- Next search: when the daily search runs next, if it's on.
- Broaden your profile, when the last search found nothing new. It opens your company profile.
- Make it daily, while the daily search is off.
- Recent searches. Click one to see its details.
Turn on the daily scan
The daily scan is off when you install. After your first results, Rory offers to run every morning. Accept its Daily scan card to turn it on. If you chose Not now, click Search every morning above the message box, or Make it daily in the Activity tab's Searches section, whenever you're ready.
The daily scan runs each morning and posts only opportunities that are new, skipping anything already in your pipeline. Like all scheduled work, it runs only while Pencel is open and your computer is awake.
Pursue or pass
Each strong match arrives as a card, on Home and in the room. Click Pursue or Pass.
On an opportunity's own page the same choice reads Pursue (bid) or No-bid, with a box to note why. Pencel saves your reason with the decision and uses it when judging future bids.
Your pipeline
The wall on the right of the room shows your pipeline in four stages.
| Stage | What's in it |
|---|---|
| New | Fresh finds, best fit first. Pursue or pass. |
| In progress | Bids you're pursuing, soonest deadline first. |
| Submitted | Bids you've submitted yourself. Record Won or Lost when you hear back. |
| Closed | Won, lost and passed. |
Click a stage to open it as a full page. Filter it with All, New today, Deadline ≤ 14d, Score ≥ 80 or Passed.
Click any opportunity to open its page. The buttons at the top move it along (for example to Submitted, then Won or Lost). Share saves a one-page brief you can forward. The tabs are Overview, Requirements, Evidence, Proposal, Decisions and Activity. On Requirements, Mine from solicitation pulls the requirements out of the posting and marks each one Unknown, Satisfied, Partial, Gap or N/A.
Read a fit score
The Overview tab shows the fit score out of 100, with one line per reason and where each fact came from. The score weighs:
- Product fit, the biggest factor. Work you said you don't do scores zero, and a bid that isn't a real match for what you sell is dropped, however good the rest looks.
- Contract value, against the sizes you said are worth your time.
- Response runway. Full points when the deadline is 14 or more days away.
- Set-aside match, against the registrations you hold. For state and local bids, where you can deliver counts instead.
Only opportunities scoring 70 or higher reach you. By default Pencel looks at bids whose responses are due within the next 60 days.
Next to the score you'll see Grounded or Provisional. Grounded means the score rests on facts you've confirmed. Provisional means some key facts are missing, and a button names them so you can confirm them in Knowledge. The scout's first-pass score is shown too, marked "advisory". Rely on the fit score.
Needs manual review
For state and local bids, Pencel opens each link and checks the deadline before it shows you anything. A strong match it can't confirm doesn't become a card. It goes into a Needs manual review section of that day's digest, with the reason, so you can check it yourself. Digests are saved as documents in the room's Artifacts tab and in Documents.
Share with your team
On the pipeline, Share saves a forwardable brief of a stage. Email team turns that brief into an email to the addresses you enter: click Draft the email, review it, and it sends from your own Gmail only when you press Send.
Draft a proposal
There are two ways to start, both from an opportunity page or its row under In progress.
| Draft for me | Write proposal (or Tailor) | |
|---|---|---|
| When | After you pursue the bid. | Any time before the bid closes. |
| What happens | Rory writes a full proposal from the solicitation and your company facts, and marks any claim it couldn't back up so you can check it. | Opens Tailor, which adapts one of your own documents, such as a past proposal or template, to this bid's requirements. |
| Where it lands | Linked to the opportunity (Open proposal), in the room's Artifacts tab and in Documents. | A tailored copy in Documents. Your original is never changed. |
To tailor a document yourself:
- On the opportunity page, click Write proposal (on the Proposal tab it's Tailor myself).
- Under Choose a document to tailor, pick your past proposal or template. A Word (.docx) file or a Pencel document keeps its formatting. A PDF comes in as text only.
- Check the Requirements. They're filled in from the opportunity. Paste or upload more if you need to.
- Click Analyze requirements. Pencel creates a tailored copy and suggests changes.
- Accept or Reject each suggestion.
- Click Export compliance matrix to save a requirement-by-requirement table as a new document.
The compliance matrix lists each requirement, where it came from, where your proposal addresses it, and a status: Compliant, Verify (format), Presumed covered (confirm), Excluded or Not yet addressed. Only Tailor exports the matrix.
Improve its judgment
- Confirm your company facts. RFP Operations scores against what it knows about your products and services, capabilities, certifications, past performance, bid preferences, customers and people. Facts Pencel finds on its own wait for you to Confirm them in the room. It never scores against a fact you haven't confirmed. See Teach Pencel about your business.
- Review facts in the room. When facts are waiting, a line in the room says so. Click Review here, then Confirm or Dismiss each one. When a confirmed fact changes a score, the room tells you which opportunity moved.
- Let Rory read your documents for facts. Ask in the room, for example "fill in our company facts from our knowledge". Rory reads the project's knowledge documents and posts a Company facts to confirm card: the facts it found, ticked, and a short "what you sell" line for your Profile. Untick anything that isn't right, edit the line, and choose Confirm. Nothing is saved until you do, and facts you untick keep waiting.
- Give standing rules. Tell the room "never bid on janitorial services" or "flag anything over $2M". It replies "Saved as a standing rule" and applies it to every search. If it misunderstood, click Not what I meant.
- Say why you pass. The reason you give with a No-bid helps Pencel judge similar bids later.
Sources and keys
| Bids | Where Pencel looks |
|---|---|
| Federal | GovCon, which gathers federal listings, including those posted on SAM.gov. |
| State, local and education | HigherGov, plus a focused search of public bid portals such as BidNet Direct, DemandStar, OpenGov, PlanetBids and Bonfire. |
When you're signed in, searches use Pencel's shared access to these sources, with a daily allowance for each user. To search beyond the daily allowance, add your own GovCon or HigherGov key in Settings ▸ Connections. See Connect your accounts.
If no source can be searched, for example because you're signed out, Rory tells you once in the room's conversation. The message names each source and the reason, with the fix: Sign in, Add keys or Check again. Click Not now to leave it for later.
Home tells you too:
- Can't reach the RFP sources means no source could be reached, so no search started. Click Sign in, or Add my own keys.
- GovCon wasn't searched or HigherGov wasn't searched means your last search ran without that source. A tag says why: Allowance used up, Key needed or Turned off. Add my own key takes you to Settings ▸ Connections. The card clears itself after the next clean search.
What it never does
- It never submits a bid or proposal. You submit through the agency's own process.
- It never sends an email without you. Email team only drafts. Nothing sends until you press Send.
- It never treats a guess as a fact. Company facts Pencel finds on its own wait for your confirmation, and state and local bids it can't verify go to Needs manual review, not onto a card.
Related
Email pilot (local, opt-in)
Open RFP Operations → Email pilot. Select an existing Google Workspace connection and an agent in the current project. For the sender, use the connected account’s own address or one of its Send mail as addresses (Gmail → Settings → Accounts), plus a different address for the human recipient. One mailbox can serve several agents this way, each with its own address: Pencel answers only email sent or copied to the sender address. Paste the company facts and proposal template the recipient is allowed to use, set the relevance threshold and daily scan hour/timezone, and save. Click Send verification email: the recipient confirms the address by replying Yes to it, any time within three days, and the Email pilot tab shows it as verified within a minute or two of the reply (Pencel must be running). The same email has a code that also works, for 24 hours, if you'd rather enter it yourself. Then authorize and enable the pilot. To see what the recipient would get before anything goes out, click Preview digest: it shows today's digest from the opportunities in the project, and sends nothing. Existing connections may need reconnection to discover the new Gmail tools.
The pilot emails saved opportunity references such as RFP-1. Reply Draft RFP-1 and RFP-2 to request proposals. Missing evidence produces an email question; answer inline, naming the reference when several drafts are active. Accessible public solicitation links can be read. The agent sends editable DOCX drafts for review, never bids to an agency. Replies such as Revise RFP-1 to include weekend service create a private revision.
Start a conversation from a new email. Write to the agent's address from the verified recipient address, for example Can you find paratransit scheduling RFPs in Oregon? Pencel answers in the same thread. Ask it to search, and it replies in that thread with the opportunities it finds, numbered for that conversation, or tells you nothing new turned up and what it checked. Email from anyone else to that address isn't opened.
Forward an RFP or attach the document. Forward a solicitation email to the agent's address with a line such as Worth bidding on?, or attach a PDF or text file to any email or reply. You can also send a file with no message. Pencel reads it and answers from it, naming it as the source. When you ask for a draft in the same email, the drafter reads it too. Pencel doesn't open Word or Excel files, scans or photos yet. The reply names any file it couldn't read and why, so paste the parts you need or send a PDF. Pencel treats what you forward or attach as something to read, not as your request. If you send it with no words of your own, Pencel only answers questions about it. It won't start a search or a draft until you ask.
Reply the way you'd reply to a colleague. Pencel reads the earlier emails in the thread from its own records, so a short reply such as Yes, go ahead or the second one means what you'd expect. Ask When is your next search? and it gives the time from your settings. RFP Operations → Email pilot shows the same Next search time.
Only the approved setup material, selected opportunity evidence, and this conversation’s replies enter drafting. Other conversations and general agent/workspace memory are excluded. The private drafts do not appear in shared room documents.
Pencel must be open on an awake laptop. It checks email every minute while open, and again at startup and wake; a reply read on another device still counts. The first email in each conversation says so, and a reply that comes more than 30 minutes after your email starts with an apology and the time Pencel came back. The pilot’s daily scan uses the existing RFP scan service. Avoid also scheduling an independent RFP scan for the same daily work.
If Pencel is signed out. Pencel needs you signed in to read and write. If it's signed out on your computer, it doesn't start anything. It sends you one email that day saying so. When you open Pencel and sign in, it answers the emails that were waiting and runs that day's search. If a search couldn't reach any of your RFP sources, the digest says so and names each source with the reason. It never reports "nothing new" for a search that didn't happen, and it tries once more the same day.
Every email gets a reply. If Pencel can’t finish something, it replies in the same thread with a plain reason. Reply retry and it tries that email or draft again (up to three times). If today’s search can’t start, you get an email saying why and when it will try again. Asking for a draft that’s already in progress gets “I’m already working on it” instead of starting over.
Email Pencel can’t verify. Email from someone else in the thread (for example, a colleague you copied) is recorded but never answered. If an email from your own address can’t be verified, Pencel doesn’t act on it and emails you a notice. To act on it anyway, open RFP Operations → Email pilot and choose Process this email.
What the digest tells you. Each opportunity says why it matched (how well it fits what you sell, whether you'd be the main supplier, anything still to check) with a line from the source. Opportunities you haven't seen come first under New since your last digest; ones sent earlier are listed briefly under Still open. Pencel doesn't send a digest when nothing is new, unless a deadline is within a week or a source had a problem. After three quiet days it sends a short note that it's still watching.
See what happened to every email. Open RFP Operations → Email pilot and look at the Mail log. Each email you sent shows its state (for example Answered, Draft sent, Waiting for you or Couldn't finish), why Pencel did what it did, and a link to the thread in Gmail. Choose Timeline to see each step, with links to every reply.
Pausing and delivery. Pausing holds queued emails; resuming sends them if the recipient and sender address haven’t changed. If a sender address is removed from Send mail as, the pilot stops and says so until you add it back. When Gmail doesn’t confirm a send, Pencel checks Sent and sends the email again only if Gmail never received it, up to five times. After that, use Send again in the Email pilot tab. “Accepted by Gmail” does not mean read by the recipient. Saving settings keeps your place in the mailbox, so email that arrives before you verify again is still read. Changing the Gmail account requires setup and verification again, and a different recipient or account after conversations exist requires a separate project.
This implementation still requires qualification with the intended live mailboxes; automated provider fixtures do not establish real deliverability.