Procurement rigor at startup speed.
TinyRFP is an open-source, agentic toolkit for the B2B purchases that are too important to wing and too small for a formal RFP. You author a structured brief; an agent researches and scores the market; you get a defensible, fully cited shortlist.
Open schemas, open skills, open reference servers — no central gatekeeper, no paid placement.
The gap
Two broken paths — and a wide middle nobody serves
Companies of roughly 50–2,000 people making purchases of roughly $25K–$2M need the rigor of a formal process at the speed and cost of an informal one.
The informal path
Ask around, Google the category, book a few demos.
Fast — but biased toward the loudest marketing, exposed to a single bad recommendation, undocumented, and indefensible when the decision is later questioned.
The formal RFP path
Structured, auditable, fair.
Also slow (often 3–9 months), expensive, and so burdensome that many of the best providers simply decline to participate.
Where TinyRFP fits
Two sides, one open standard
A buy side and a sell side that can find each other
The connective tissue is an open specification — schemas plus a discovery convention — so both sides interoperate without a central registry.
Buy side
Author. Research. Shortlist.
An authoring skill interviews you into a structured brief, then an autonomous research agent discovers candidates, gathers and verifies evidence, scores against your rubric, and writes a cited report.
How buyers use TinyRFP →Sell side
Be legible to buyer agents.
A reference MCP server and onboarding kit let any solution provider publish profiles, case studies, pricing guidance, and compliance docs that buyer agents can discover, query, and interrogate.
How providers use TinyRFP →How it works
From a brief to a defensible shortlist
The research agent runs a seven-stage pipeline. Three of the moments that matter:
- 01
Discover
Generate diverse search strategies, build a longlist of 15–40 candidates, and probe each domain for a TinyRFP endpoint, llms.txt, or MCP card.
- 02
Verify
Cross-check high-weight claims against authoritative registries: licenses, FDA clearances, ISO registrations, status pages. Contradictions are surfaced prominently.
- 03
Report
Produce the shortlist report — recommendations, a comparison matrix, candidate dossiers, methodology, and full appendices — in Markdown, HTML, and PDF.
Why now
The open, neutral, mid-market layer doesn't exist yet
Everything adjacent is closed, enterprise-only, SaaS-only, or pay-to-play. That gap is the niche TinyRFP fills.
| Category | Examples | Gap TinyRFP fills |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise procurement suites | Coupa, JAGGAER, Zip, Ivalua | Closed, expensive, enterprise-only; agents live inside one buyer's walled garden. |
| Spend / procurement agents | Ramp procurement agents | Tied to one platform, SaaS-spend focused, not open. |
| Review & marketplace sites | G2, Capterra, Clutch | SaaS/agency only, pay-to-play ranking dynamics, no structured deliverable, no agent interface. |
| Agent-readiness standards | llms.txt, MCP cards, A2A | Generic infrastructure with no procurement semantics — no way to publish case studies, references, or compliance. |
Enterprise procurement suites
Coupa, JAGGAER, Zip, Ivalua
Closed, expensive, enterprise-only; agents live inside one buyer's walled garden.
Spend / procurement agents
Ramp procurement agents
Tied to one platform, SaaS-spend focused, not open.
Review & marketplace sites
G2, Capterra, Clutch
SaaS/agency only, pay-to-play ranking dynamics, no structured deliverable, no agent interface.
Agent-readiness standards
llms.txt, MCP cards, A2A
Generic infrastructure with no procurement semantics — no way to publish case studies, references, or compliance.
The tools are coming soon.
TinyRFP ships as portable skills and a reference MCP server you run inside the AI assistants you already use — no new app to install.