Working with agents

What you can hand to an AI assistant connected to your Estii data, in plain language.

Connect an AI assistant to Estii and it can work with the same commercial model your team uses: deals, scope, rates, resources, milestones, approvals, comments, versions, forecasts, and your library of previously sold work.

You don't need to talk in ids. Use the names your team uses. Ask follow-up questions. The best results usually come from a short conversation rather than a single perfect prompt.

If the assistant is new to your space, ask it to get its bearings before it writes or changes anything. It can inspect the structure of a deal, understand the labels you use for phases and sections, see which resources an estimate is priced against, and tell you when Estii refuses a change.

These examples assume you have connected an assistant through Estii's MCP server. The assistant works through Estii's CLI, so it can read live Estii data and, where your permissions allow, change it. Review proposed changes before applying them, especially on active deals.

First, ask what is there

Start with the same questions you would ask a teammate before a call.

Give me a summary of the ACME Customer Portal deal.

You get the deal value, cost, margin, owner, stage, dates, and account context.

How is that split across phases?

The assistant breaks the deal down by phase, with duration, people, price, cost, and margin contribution.

Anything unusual in there?

It looks for where the commercial weight sits: a phase carrying most of the value, a section running at a thinner margin than the rest, or a large payment milestone that changes the cash shape of the deal.

When did anyone last touch it?

It returns the last change date and current stage, so you know whether you are looking at fresh work or something that has been sitting for a while.

Understand the price

When the number is already on the table, ask what is driving it.

Break down the ACME Customer Portal price by category.

You get each category and section, with scope, effort, cost, price, and margin.

Which parts are dragging the margin down?

The assistant shows the lower-margin parts and the size of the drag.

What is the resourcing behind the build phase?

It shows who is on the phase, how much of each resource is allocated, and which rates are being used.

How much senior engineering is in this deal in total?

It reads the estimates themselves rather than guessing from a phase-level summary.

Get a picture of a deal to put in front of someone

The same answers work as pictures. A chart is what goes in a board pack, a quarterly review, or an email to a client, and asking for one is no different from asking for the number.

Chart the ACME Customer Portal price by category.

You get the deal's own groupings drawn as a division of the total, largest first. Ask for it by phase, by section, or by whichever grouping you use instead.

Which work is big but not worth much? Plot effort against price.

Every piece of work in the deal, placed by the effort behind it against what it sells for. The ones carrying days and very little price are where your margin is going.

Show me how the deal is resourced across its phases.

Each phase on the dates it actually runs, with the people it calls for. Phases that sit apart, or that are pinned to a fixed date, appear where they really are rather than end to end.

And what the money looks like month by month.

The payment milestones as they fall, so you can see when cash arrives rather than what the deal adds up to.

A picture reads as complete in a way a table does not, so it is worth knowing what these leave out. Work you have taken out of scope keeps its price in the underlying numbers, so a division of the price can add up to slightly more than the deal you are quoting; ask for the scoped figures if that difference matters. And work priced without effort behind it, a recurring charge or a fixed cost, has no size to plot: the assistant names it rather than drawing it as nothing.

An artifact takes your own appearance. Unless you say otherwise it uses your space's theme, the colours and fonts your customers already see on your proposals, so something built for your client carries your brand rather than Estii's. Anything you ask for yourself wins over that. It also carries a line saying which deal it was built from, when, and where to find it, so whoever reads it later can trace a figure back. Ask for that line to be left off and it is.

Check capacity and revenue across the pipeline

Some questions are not about one deal. They are about what all open work adds up to over the next few months.

What does our capacity look like over the next six months?

You get week-by-week demand in full-time equivalents across three bands:

won work
won work plus open deals weighted by probability
won work plus every open deal at full weight

Those bands give you a floor, a likely picture, and a ceiling.

Which roles is that concentrated in, and when does it peak?

The same demand is split by role, with the peak week named for each role. This is demand, not availability. Estii does not hold your headcount, so a peak tells you where work piles up, not whether you have enough people.

Which deals are driving that peak?

The assistant splits the same window by deal, so the few deals causing the spike come to the top.

What does revenue recognition look like over the next twelve months?

Revenue is reported month by month from payment milestones, not from deal totals. Longer windows use months rather than weeks.

Only the approved work, and only the delivery team.

Filters narrow the same picture by deal, role, resource tag, or stage.

That March peak is too high. What if Northwind started a month later?

The assistant previews the new start date, what would move with it, and whether a version will be saved first. A deal past draft is versioned before its dates change, so the approved shape stays recoverable.

Forecast answers say when they were calculated. If a deal has changed since the forecast was calculated, the assistant tells you rather than presenting stale figures as current.

Rescope a deal

Shaping a deal is deciding what stays in, what comes out, and what the change does to the commercial shape.

In the ACME Customer Portal, which items could come out to save $40K?

The assistant values each item against what is currently in scope. If something is already partly out, it is described that way rather than counted twice.

Take the reporting module out of phase one.

The change is previewed first. The line items under the module move with it, instead of being left behind.

What is the deal worth now?

You get the new price, cost, margin, and schedule.

Put it back.

The same scope returns, including any line items that were already out before this change started.

For bigger edits, save a version before you begin.

Save a version of ACME Customer Portal first, call it "before rescope".

That gives you a restore point.

Drop the second training workshop, and add five days of senior dev to discovery.

Each change is previewed, then applied once you approve it.

What did that do to the margin?

The assistant compares the new totals with where the deal started.

And the delivery dates?

Changing effort moves the schedule, so the assistant reports the new end date.

Actually, revert all of it.

The deal is restored from the version you saved.

Close a gap between your price and the customer's budget

This is often the reason to open a deal at all.

They have $280K. We are at $340K. What are the options?

The assistant works from your live rates. It can compare discounts, descoping, resource swaps, and the margin impact of each option.

What if the discovery work went to a mid-level engineer rather than a senior?

It prices the swap against your rate card without touching the deal.

Try a 10% discount instead.

The discount is previewed before it is added. Once approved, the deal reports both numbers: the price the scope adds up to and the price the customer sees after discount, each with its own margin.

That takes us under 35% margin. Take it off and drop the second training workshop instead.

The discount comes off. The scope change is previewed the same way, so you can compare the two options on real numbers.

Start a deal

When a new opportunity has no scope yet, start from something that already has a shape.

What can we start a new deal from?

The assistant lists your templates and what each one creates: categories, sections, and the work seeded under them.

Start one for Northwind off the Delivery template. Call it "Northwind Phase 1".

The deal is created with its first phase, category, and section, so there is somewhere to put work straight away. If the account does not exist yet, Estii creates it and tells you.

Actually base it on the ACME Customer Portal deal instead, but leave the numbers behind.

The structure is copied across and the estimates are stripped out, so you keep the shape and re-estimate it for the new customer.

Turn a proposal into a deal

If the scope already exists in a spreadsheet, proposal, RFP, or SOW, hand the file over instead of typing it back in.

Here is the RFP from Northwind. Build me a deal from it.

The file is uploaded and composition starts. Composition takes a few minutes, so the assistant tells you it is running and comes back when it is done. You get the same deal Estii would build from the app.

Tell it the optional phases should be priced too.

You can give the assistant the same steer the app asks for during import. The instruction is carried into composition rather than applied afterwards.

How far has it got?

The assistant shows each step and what it produced. If the composition went somewhere unexpected, you can see where. If you stop it, the uploaded source is discarded. If it fails, the source is kept so you can inspect the failure.

Actually, we are at our deal limit on this plan.

Estii refuses before anything runs. The same is true if composing is switched off for the space, or if the space has already used its hourly composition allowance.

Build scope line by line

You can also build directly inside an existing deal.

Set up the Discovery phase on ACME Customer Portal: a workshop line item, a requirements one, and five days of senior dev on each.

The assistant creates the phase, sections, line items, and estimates in order. Effort is stored in the unit you used, so five days is not quietly stored as a number with no unit attached.

Now move the requirements one above the workshop, and copy the whole phase for phase two.

Reordering is treated as a move. Copying a phase takes its contents with it, so phase two starts as a full copy and can be edited down.

Use work you have already sold

Your library holds reusable work, named and grouped, with low, typical, and high estimates drawn from deals you have won.

What have we got in the library for taking card payments?

The assistant returns matching items, the confidence of each match, and why it matched. Each item includes its price range at your current rates, plus a grade for how proven and current it is.

Tell me what the Stripe one actually covers.

You get the tasks in order. Each task shows low, typical, and high amounts, and how many deals stand behind them. If an amount was typed by hand rather than observed from past deals, it is marked that way.

Put it into ACME Customer Portal under Integrations, at the high end.

The line item, tasks, and estimates are previewed before they land. If the library item knows where it belongs, the assistant tells you where it chose. If it does not, it asks.

One of those lines wants a Cloud Engineer and we do not have one on this deal.

Nothing is written. The assistant names the line and shows the resources the deal does hold, so you can map it to the right one or leave it out.

That Stripe estimate is out of date, it is nearer five days now.

Library corrections are previewed before they land. The amount must include a unit, so a figure meant as days is not stored as hours. A corrected amount is marked as typed by hand, which stops the next won deal from averaging it back out.

Anything in the library waiting on me?

The assistant shows items waiting for review, with a link to each one. Accepting, declining, and deleting library work stays in the app because those actions are judgements about evidence. Deleting archives an item rather than removing it outright.

Build a library from old proposals

If your library is thin, your old proposals are often the best source material.

Here are twenty SOWs we have delivered. Work out what we sell and put it up for me to look at.

Nothing is added to the live library straight away. Estii creates review items: each piece of work it found, named, with tasks and line estimates, priced at your rates so you can inspect it before accepting it.

Until you accept an item, it cannot be found, matched, or added to a deal. That makes it safe to run against a library your team already uses.

Where does it think all this belongs?

Each review item shows where it wants to be filed. If it needs a group you do not have yet, the group is not created until you approve it. If it looks like work you already have, Estii shows the matching item and offers to fold the new evidence into it.

Fine, take the lot, but put the reporting ones together.

You can accept items one at a time, choose which tasks and lines to keep, and decide where each goes. Or you can accept a selection in one go and send them all to the same place. Anything declined is discarded and will not come back.

Inspect a line before changing it

For smaller changes, ask what an item is worth before you edit it.

Which line items on ACME Customer Portal carry the most value?

The assistant lists line items in deal order, with units and value.

What is actually in the integrations one?

It shows that line item on its own, including everything under it and what it comes to.

Some of those have a plus next to the days. What does that mean?

The number covers most of what sits under the line, but not everything. For example, licences may sit beside effort. Estii says what was left out instead of folding unlike units into one figure.

Now drop it to five days.

The change is previewed against the current value, then applied once you approve it.

Set up or fix the things you price from

Deals are priced from roles, products, streams, rate cards, and tags. You can ask the assistant to inspect or change those too.

Add a Senior Developer role, $700 a day to us and $1,400 to the customer.

The role is added to every rate card you hold. A card you have not named takes the rate implied by its own margin band. If a figure belongs to a specific card, say which one.

Premium Support should run at 45% margin, and cheaper above fifty seats.

The assistant previews the product's volume table before and after, including the tier that takes over above fifty seats and the price movement it causes.

What is the Delivery Pod made of?

You get the roles it allocates and how much of each. A stream has no rate of its own. Its cost and price come from the allocations, so changing an allocation moves both.

We do not sell Junior Developer any more. Take it out.

Estii will not delete a resource while other work is priced against it. The assistant names the streams that would be recomposed and asks what should replace the role. Once you choose, it repoints those streams and removes the role.

Changing a resource needs the manager role. It does not reprice existing deals on its own. Each deal holds its own copy and takes the update only when someone decides it should.

Push a rate change through open deals

Putting a rate up does not quietly reprice work you have already quoted. Estii shows you what would change first.

Put the senior engineer day rate up to $1,400.

The assistant shows the current rate and the new rate before applying the change. If you use more than one rate card, say which card it lands on. Also say whether the amount is your cost or the customer price.

Which of our open deals are still on the old rate?

You get the deals that are behind and how long they have been behind.

What would updating ACME Customer Portal do to it?

The assistant previews every change and the movement in total price and margin.

Do it for all of them.

Each deal is updated in turn, with changes shown first. Only draft deals can take the update. Deals already out for approval or signature are reported as not updated, so quoted work does not move without someone noticing.

Anything you could not update?

If a change needs judgement, such as mapping a retired resource to a replacement, the assistant stops on that deal and gives you a link to sort it out in the app.

Run a pipeline review

Use these questions when you want to know where deals stand. For demand over time, use capacity and revenue forecasts.

What is in the pipeline right now, by value and probability?

Every open deal, with stage, value, and margin.

What have we won this quarter, and at what margin?

The same view, filtered to closed-won.

Which deals have not been touched in two weeks?

The stale deals, oldest first.

Which ones are waiting on someone to approve them?

The deals sitting with an approver, and who they are sitting with.

Send ACME Customer Portal to Sam for approval.

The assistant confirms the move first, then submits it and notifies Sam.

Close the Northwind deal as won. We signed the SOW yesterday.

It confirms the stage change and records the reason.

Pick up comment threads

What has Sam commented on in the ACME deal?

Sam's comments, with the thing each comment is attached to.

Anything still unresolved?

The open threads.

What was the pricing one about?

The comment and replies under it.

Reply saying we have re-scoped it and the number holds, and mark it resolved.

The assistant previews the reply before posting it, then closes the thread.

Compare versions and export a deal

What versions do we have of ACME Customer Portal?

Every saved version, with who saved it, when, and what the deal was worth at the time.

Show me the deal as it was in "sent to legal".

The assistant shows the deal at that point, read-only.

What is different between then and now?

You get the movement in value, cost, and margin between the two versions.

Export the current one to a spreadsheet for me.

The workbook is written where you ask for it, with its size reported so you know it arrived whole.

Now give me the proposal itself as a PDF.

The same document the proposal's download button produces, because it is the same render: the assistant opens the proposal in a browser on your machine and saves what comes back. It needs a browser installed to do that, and it tells you the address to open yourself if there is none. Ask for a saved version and you get that version's proposal instead of the current one.

When Estii refuses a request

Sometimes Estii will not carry out a request. The assistant tells you why and does not save a partial change.

Common reasons:

Your role does not allow it. The assistant has the same access you do. Editing a deal needs editor access or above. Approving, closing, saving a version, and changing the library or resources need manager access.
Your plan does not allow it. Most reads work on every plan. Pipeline forecasts and changes made from outside the app need a paid plan or active trial. The app itself is unaffected.
The deal is no longer in draft. Scope is editable while a deal is in draft. Once it is approved, commercial fields stay open but scope content does not. Returning it to draft reopens the scope.
The change would leave the data in a state Estii does not support. For example, a rate card with its floor above its ceiling, two roles with the same name, an estimate measured in the wrong unit, or a line pointing at something being removed.

If existing data already has a problem, Estii tells you about it. That does not stop unrelated work. A new invalid change is refused before anything is saved.