Proposal Builder
Turns a walkthrough into a priced BOM in minutes, not days.
Get the proposal out while the client is still excited.
Proposal Builder takes everything you collected on the walkthrough, the voice notes, the photos, the room-by-room wishlist, and turns it into a structured scope, a draft BOM, a labor estimate, and client-ready proposal copy in one guided conversation. Runs on Claude and Cowork from a plain conversation, no connectors needed.
Download the skillThe problem
Your proposals are not slow because your team is lazy. They are slow because every quote is rebuilt from scratch. You walk the job, talk through TVs, speakers, shades, cameras, control, and racks, and then everything sits. In your head. In a notebook. In iPhone photos. The proposal waits on your time, then on design, then on pricing, then on cleanup.
Meanwhile the client is interviewing two other companies, and the first clean proposal in their inbox usually wins. A shop quoting 10 to 20 jobs per month is burying a full-time person's worth of labor inside the pre-sale process, with zero guarantee any of it closes.
The fix is not typing faster. It is never starting from a blank page again.
What you get
How it works
Job intake first. Four questions before anything else: pricing mode (T&M or fixed), tier (Good, Better, Best), build context (existing, remodel, new construction), and new or existing client. These four shape every artifact downstream, and they get stamped at the top of each one.
Load your price book. Do you have an equipment list with your standard models, prices, and labor rates? Paste it or attach it and everything comes back priced from YOUR data. Skip it and the skill runs in placeholder mode: full structure, every model and price flagged for you to fill.
Dump the walkthrough. Paste your voice memo transcript, type your notes from memory, or describe the job room by room. Messy is fine. That is the point.
Guided fact-find. It walks you through the gaps one question at a time: rooms, systems per room, client priorities, budget signals, site conditions, existing equipment. No walls of questions.
Scope assembly. It organizes everything into a numbered scope of work with assumptions and exclusions spelled out, the document that keeps sales, ops, and the client aligned.
BOM and labor draft. It builds the line-item equipment list and labor estimate from the scope, flagging every placeholder it could not confirm instead of inventing a price.
Proposal copy. It writes the client-facing sections in your voice, ready to drop into your proposal tool or send as a summary while the full document is finished.
Example output
Scope: Media Room (Room 4 of 9)
Labor draft: prewire verification 3 hrs, install and trim 14 hrs, rack build 6 hrs, programming 8 hrs. Placeholder: programming hours pending processor confirmation.
Open questions: shade count in primary bedroom, network closet ventilation, client's existing Sonos gear staying or going.
How to trigger it
Works with
Install + download
Click the download link below and save the file.
In Claude: go to Settings, then Skills, and upload the file.
In Cowork: open the Skills panel and upload the file.
Test it: say "run the proposal builder" and describe the last job you walked.
The core prompt
Use this if your platform has no Skills support. Paste it into custom instructions.
# Proposal Builder You turn a messy AV walkthrough into a structured scope of work, draft BOM, labor estimate, and client-ready proposal copy. The user is an AV integration owner or salesperson who just walked a job. STEP 0. INTAKE. Before reading any notes, ask these four questions, once, and record the answers at the top of every artifact: 1. Pricing mode: Time & Materials or Fixed price 2. Tier: Good, Better, or Best 3. Build context: existing home, remodel, or new construction 4. New client or existing Pricing mode changes presentation only, never design. T&M shows equipment, labor, and project total as three figures, labor hours visible, with a billed-at-actuals note. Fixed price shows one installed price per system, no labor lines, with a firm-price-plus-change-order note. Never mix the two. Tier sets the default spec standard, and the client's stated wants win over tier with the gap flagged. Build context sets wiring assumptions: new construction wiring is yours to specify, remodel and existing wiring is a constraint and surprises go in Assumptions. If the user answers any of these in prose, reflect it back in one line and do not re-ask. STEP 1. PRICE BOOK. Ask once for their price book: standard models, prices, labor rates. With it, every number comes from their book. Without it, build the full structure with every model and price marked [PLACEHOLDER: confirm model/price], and close the run by telling them a one-page price book makes every future run come back priced. Never guess silently, never ask for the book twice. STEP 2. THE DUMP. Ask for the raw material: transcript, notes, or a walkthrough from memory. Read it all before asking anything. STEP 3. FILL THE GAPS. One question at a time, never in bundles, only what the dump did not answer: rooms and count, systems per room, client priorities, budget signals, site conditions, existing equipment staying or going. STEP 4. PRODUCE, in this order: 1. Scope of Work: numbered by room and system, header line carrying the four intake answers, then Assumptions and Exclusions. Nothing implied. Pause here for corrections before continuing. 2. Draft BOM: line items by room, quantity, category. Never invent a model number or price. Before finalizing, count every network port the design needs, add the uplink, and compare against the switch specified. Do the same for rack U-space, amp zones, and license tiers. Call out any count within one or two units of a threshold. 3. Labor Estimate: by phase, hours plus the assumption behind each number, presented per the pricing mode. Close with: check these hours against your last three similar jobs. 4. Proposal Copy: client-facing, plain and confident, outcomes not SKUs. No model numbers, rates, or margin language anywhere. 5. Open Questions: blockers at the top, notes at the bottom. RULES. Never assume scope the user did not state. Flag conflicts between client wishes and site conditions. Keep labor honest, not optimistic. If a budget signal exists, note where the scope exceeds it instead of silently trimming.
Sell in packages? The Good-Better-Best Package Builder turns your price book into predetermined tiers, and Proposal Builder quotes "use my Better package" in one line.
Only need the handoff doc? The Scope of Work Builder delivers the detailed scope your system designer needs, without the pricing.
This is a template, not a finished product. The skill knows structure, not your shop. Without your data it delivers the full scope, labor framework, and proposal copy with placeholders where your models and prices go. To unlock priced mode, build a one-page price book: your 20 most-used products with prices, plus labor rates per phase. Load it at the start of any run and every output comes back in your numbers. Run it once on a real walkthrough, tune it, save your version.