Illuminated · proposal generator · field guide

How a proposal gets made

Six raw inputs go in. A branded proposal site comes out. Between them sit two skills and one approval the machine can't skip. The Growth team edits every word a prospect will read before anything gets assembled.

The inputs start here
Home: Google Drive · BizDev and Sales · [ClientName]
research fuel
8-Figure Readiness Quiz
Three scores, fifteen answers, revenue band. The scoreboard and the intro stat come from here.
research fuel
Company website
The teardown target. The headline finding almost always lives here.
call material
Discovery Call transcript
The only legal source for What We Heard quotes.
call material
Director of Growth notes
Which metrics to highlight and the quiz stat of interest. The requestor's call, not the machine's.
call material
Contact LinkedIn
Title for the cover line, and the read on who's buying.
call material
HubSpot deal
Which proposal to build and on what terms.
Skill 1 · Research before anything is written
Why it exists: the best proposal material is generated, not handed over
step 1
Scoreboard read
The three scores and the single lowest answer. The shape matters more than the number.
step 2
Site walk
Walk the site like a prospect. Find where their strength is invisible at the point of decision.
step 3
Review mining
The loud theme vs the quiet theme in their own reviews.
step 4
Market scan
What competitors sell, what buyers tune out, what customers actually say.
step 5
The spine
One root problem, its symptoms, and the real move to hold for each.
→ research-pack.md → spine.md every claim cited to its source
Skill 2 · Generate output 1
Writes only the four custom slots. Everything else is locked
step 0
Inventory gate
Lists what's present and what's missing. A missing input flags its section BLOCKED. It never invents to fill a gap.
step 1
Draft the custom sections
Intro · What We Heard · The Vision · phase bullets. Written to one specific buyer, on the spine.
step 2
Self-check
Every claim traced, no invented numbers, every section pointing at the one root problem. Claim-to-source table attached.
OUTPUT 1 → markdown draft, saved to the client's Drive folder missing transcript = What We Heard ships BLOCKED, never faked
The Growth team edits no AI in this step
Hard stop: the final site cannot be built until the edited draft comes back
what they do
Edit the words a prospect will read
Tighten, correct, re-voice. Human judgment on every custom line, in a doc, like any edit pass.
what comes back
The edited draft, returned to the skill
That returned version, not the machine's first draft, is what the final proposal is built from.
Skill 2 · Assemble output 2
Custom sections as edited + locked sections verbatim, in Illuminated styling
step 3
Reconcile the edits
What changed, whether any edit lost its evidence, whether the root-problem thread survived.
step 4
Assemble the site
One branded page. Locked sections insert word-for-word from the boilerplate. Nothing added, dropped, or reordered.
OUTPUT 2 → [clientname].illuminatedblueprint.com accepted when the browser tab shows the client's name

The locked container

Ten sections, always in this order. Tap one to see what it holds. Only four are ever written per client. That's the whole trick: the machine gets a narrow lane, and consistency comes free.

What can never happen

✕
An invented number. No revenue, AUM, LTV, or benchmark figure the client didn't give us. Investment framing stays structural.
✕
A fabricated quote. What We Heard quotes come from the transcript or the section ships BLOCKED. Notes never get paraphrased into quote marks.
✕
An untraceable claim. Every fact about the client maps to a quiz answer, a page, a review, or the deal record. The claim-to-source table rides with the draft.
✕
A skipped edit pass. Output 2 is built from the returned draft only. If the edited version hasn't come back, the skill asks and stops.
✕
A restyled container. Sections never get added, dropped, or reordered. A good idea for a new section becomes a comment for review, not a change.

Why it's built this way

  • Research first. The findings that make a prospect feel read (the buried asset, the market gap, the quiet theme in their reviews) have to be dug up. No handed-over input contains them.
  • People own the words. The edit pass isn't a review formality. The returned draft literally becomes the build input.
  • The container is the brand. Every proposal leaves the shop with the same structure and styling, whoever ran it.

Runs in

  • Cowork, where the Drive connector reaches the inputs and web access runs the teardown.
  • Claude Code, same two skills, same gate.
Illuminated · Growth Blueprint proposal pipeline field guide · July 2026