A polished client proposal can be worse than a rough one if it quietly promises work you never agreed to do. The dangerous additions are usually plausible: two rounds of revisions, a Friday launch, ongoing support, or a conversion improvement. They make a draft look complete while changing the commercial offer.
The practical fix is to separate the brief, the draft and the commitment audit. You do not need a secret prompt code. You need a record of what the client actually supplied and a way to check the commitments before sending them.
Build a fact ledger before writing
Use three columns: confirmed facts, requests awaiting agreement, and missing information. For an illustrative website project, “five brochure pages” might be confirmed, “launch by 30 November” might be requested, and the fee might be unknown. Those belong in different columns.
Do not let the model turn a date mentioned in the brief into an approved schedule. The distinction should survive every revision. Keep the original source nearby so later stages can verify against it instead of treating the previous draft as evidence.
Try this first instruction:
Read the supplied brief. Return confirmed facts, requests that are not
yet commitments, and missing information. Attach a source quote to
each item. Do not draft a proposal or fill gaps with typical terms.
Read the ledger before continuing. If it already overstates the scope, repair it now; otherwise the next stage will build on an incorrect premise.
Draft around explicit unknowns
Create sections for objective, deliverables, client inputs, exclusions, timing, commercial terms and next step. Use [TO AGREE] for genuinely unresolved terms. A draft with visible gaps is useful because it tells you what to clarify.
For example, “Timing depends on receipt of final images; 30 November is the requested target” preserves an unresolved dependency. “We will launch your complete site on 30 November” removes it. That change is not a style improvement.
Keep optional recommendations outside the offer. If the model suggests analytics installation or an extra landing page, put that in a discussion list until you decide whether it belongs in scope and how it is priced.
Audit every commitment
Run a separate pass:
Compare this proposal with the original brief. For every deliverable,
price, date, revision allowance and performance claim, list its source.
Mark it supported, unapproved or unsupported. Correct the draft without
adding replacement promises. Keep this audit separate from client copy.
An illustrative audit might look like this:
| Draft claim | Source supports it? | Correction |
|---|---|---|
| Five brochure pages | Yes | Retain |
| Two revision rounds | No allowance supplied | Mark to agree |
| Guaranteed November launch | Target only; images outstanding | Preserve target and dependency |
| 30% more enquiries | No evidence supplied | Remove |
The model's audit is another draft to review, not a certification. You remain responsible for checking that the final offer reflects your agreement.
Test the process with a changed brief
Change one fact deliberately. Remove the date, alter the number of pages, or add an explicit exclusion. Run the process in a fresh conversation and check that the old detail does not survive. This tests whether you are actually grounding the draft in the input.
Before sending, check scope, money, dates, dependencies and evidence. Read those elements separately from tone. A proposal can sound persuasive while failing all five checks.
Reuse the materials
Save your intake form, prompts, example audit and final checklist together. That is the reusable asset. Our Claude Work Kit includes a complete client-proposal exercise and editable files for this process. To inspect the format before buying, try the complete free meeting-notes pack.
FAQ
Should I let Claude choose a price?
Use approved commercial terms or a separately reviewed pricing process. In this workflow, an absent fee remains an unresolved item rather than a number invented to finish the draft.
Is an AI audit enough before sending?
No. Check the commitments against the source yourself. The audit provides a review structure; it does not approve an agreement on your behalf.