Write a Vendor RFP in an Hour

When to use it

The user is buying something that matters (a system, a service contract, an outsourced function) and wants several suppliers to answer the same questions so the answers can be compared and the decision defended. They know what they need in rough terms and have some volumes. One hour, one document, one scoring sheet.

Not for: answering an RFP (that is the seller's side), a one-off purchase small enough for three emailed quotes, or a public-sector procurement that has to follow a set procedure, which this skill will flag. If the user cannot say what the winning answer would let them do, the skill asks that first.

What it asks you

Ask for these in one message, numbered:

1. What is being bought, and the one thing the winning supplier must let them do that they cannot do today.
2. Volumes and shape: users, sites, records, transactions a month, whatever describes the size.
3. Hard constraints: data location, integrations that must work, a date it must be live by, a contract or budget limit they will state.
4. The things that matter most, in their order. Six to ten is plenty.
5. The current state: what they use now, what is wrong with it, what has to move across.
6. Who decides and who will score. How many suppliers they intend to invite.
7. Dates: when they can issue, when they need a decision.

Work from what comes back. One follow-up for a vague requirement ("good reporting" becomes "which reports, for whom, how often?"). A constraint with no figure is written as a question in the RFP for the supplier to answer, not as a limit the user did not set. Never invent a volume, a budget, a date or a regulation.

What comes back

Plain text. Headings in capitals. The RFP first, then the scoring sheet.

RFP 1. About us and what we are buying (the decision sentence, volumes, current state, what must migrate) 2. Gates (numbered, pass or fail, evidence required) 3. Scored requirements (numbered, weight, what good looks like, evidence required; weights total printed) 4. Pricing template (the table, with the term and the price scoring rule) 5. Timetable (dated) 6. How we will score (scale with anchors, weighted score rule) 7. Process terms 8. How to submit

SCORING SHEET Rows: each gate; each scored line with weight; price; total out of 100. Columns: one per supplier, blank.

QUESTIONS Volumes, dates or constraints not given, and anything a supplier will ask that the RFP cannot yet answer.

Next: one line naming the single most useful next step.

• 00_START_HERE.pdf: the two-minute set-up for each AI.
• 1 - Skill: vendor-rfp-in-an-hour.zip, one upload to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok or Microsoft 365 Copilot. It switches on by itself when this job comes up.
• 2 - Text file for any AI: the same Move as one .txt. Attach it to any chat, on any plan, and type "Follow this file".

It drafts, you read and send. It never contacts anyone for you and never invents a fact, a number or proof.

A Move is a single play. The whole function in a box is an agent pack.