AI agent for public tenders: how it actually works

Classic automation executes a fixed rule, such as an email alert on a keyword. No understanding, no adaptation. An AI assistant understands content but waits for your orders: you upload documents, it analyses them; you ask for a proposal, it writes one. An AI agent adds initiative and chaining: it decides when to act, links several steps on its own and handles incidents along the way. The relevant question is therefore not the model’s power, but the exact scope of the mandate it is given.

At night, detection. New publications are matched against the company profile: trade, area, references, CPV codes. Each notice gets a relevance score. Only those above the user threshold, with accessible documents and a workable deadline, are kept.

In the morning, the proposal. A single email groups the night’s detections: subject, buyer, score, deadline. On a multi-lot tender, each lot has its own button. Nothing starts without a click, and the proposal expires after 72 hours.

After the click, preparation. The agent downloads the documents, extracts the text including optical recognition on scanned pieces, analyses the consultation rules and specifications, then drafts a complete technical proposal for the chosen lot. A second email announces it is ready.

Then, you. Review, add your field expertise, decide whether to submit. That is where the value is won.

Limits say more than promises. Four refusals should be non negotiable: submitting the bid, because transmission legally binds the company on price, deadlines and resources; working without consent, because each preparation consumes quota and review time; filling gaps by invention, because a made-up certification or headcount exposes the company to a false declaration; exceeding the budget, because an agent without a visible, adjustable monthly cap is a dangerous agent.

The gain does not only come from writing. It comes from three rarely counted items. Monitoring: three to five hours a month for a company that follows its market seriously, reduced to reading one email. Reaction time: a tender spotted on publication day leaves three to four workable weeks; the same tender found ten days later becomes a rushed answer or a missed opportunity. The psychological entry cost, the most underestimated effect: facing an empty file you postpone, facing an analysed file with a structured draft you correct. Companies adopting an agent first see a rise in the number of bids submitted, before any rise in win rate.

Two economic models coexist. The first bills the agent as an option with per-action consumption: the invoice then depends on a parameter the user barely controls. The second includes the agent in existing quotas: an agent-prepared file consumes exactly what it would have consumed manually.

Maître AO applies the second model. The agent is included in paid plans at no extra charge, and each prepared file consumes one analysis and one proposal from the monthly plan: up to 2 files per month on Starter, 5 on Pro, 10 on Max. The cap can be lowered. If the plan is used up, a one-off 19.90 EUR top-up adds one analysis and one proposal, and the waiting file resumes automatically.

Three questions to ask any vendor: how many files can the agent prepare at most this month, what happens when that cap is reached, and can I switch it off in one click.

Not all tender documents can be downloaded by a program: some buyer platforms require registration, a form or a bot check. Two attitudes exist. Circumventing those protections, which raises terms-of-use issues and breaks at the first interface change. Or admitting it and providing a relay: the agent reports it could not fetch the file, sends an upload link, and resumes preparation exactly where it stopped once the files arrive. Thirty seconds of human effort, and the chain continues.

No, and no serious vendor should claim otherwise. On a tender representing a significant share of revenue, the response is built with the company’s experts over several days. The right use of an agent is elsewhere: the everyday flow of interesting but non-vital tenders that a small company gives up on for lack of time. An agent does not replace your best bid of the year; it produces the fifteen you would never have written.