Bower

Bower is the BidNomy assistant: the tinted tile under Home in the sidebar, and the conversation behind it (Bower › Chat). The tile holds four items: Chat, Bid documents, Files and Automations. Its mark is the BidNomy tile, a "B" with the diagonal stroke of an "N", the same tile as the browser icon, and it sits beside every answer Bower writes. It reads the same records the rest of the workspace does — every AusTender approach to market, planned procurement and contract notice, every standing offer and the suppliers appointed to it, GrantConnect grant opportunities and awards, NSW grant rounds, the state and territory records your plan includes, the ACT's payments, the Commonwealth entity register and the UNSPSC categories — and answers questions about them in plain language. It is deliberately not a general assistant: ask it about the weather and it will say that is not what it is for.

Bower can prepare a bid and tasks for a pipeline you choose, or tasks for an existing bid. You review and confirm the proposal before anything is added. It cannot set up an alert, export a file, upload a document or send mail; it points you at the place in the workspace that does it. (An automation can be set to email you its report, but that is the workspace posting it, not Bower deciding to.) It can read a document you have already uploaded yourself; see Uploaded documents below.

What a turn sends to the model, what it never sends, and how long your conversations are kept is set out in AI and your data.

Chat

Every new conversation opens with the same fixed line from the page itself, above anything Bower writes: Bower is an AI assistant, not a person. It cites the records it reads; check anything you rely on. It is part of the page, not something the model says, so it is there every time.

Under every box you type to Bower in, on this page, in the floating bubble and in Bid documents, a short line stays in view: AI-generated content by Bower may be incorrect.

Every question starts a conversation. The Chats list beside the composer is yours alone: it is scoped to your sign-in, so nobody else sees a thread of yours and you see nobody else's. Pick one to carry on where you left off, or delete it, which also drops whatever Bower was keeping for it.

A conversation is deleted automatically 30 days after its last message — asking another question in it starts the 30 days again. To keep one longer, press the bookmark beside it: you can keep up to five, the line above the list shows how many you have kept, and a kept conversation stays until you press the bookmark again or delete it. In its last week an unkept conversation says "deleted in N days" under its title. Deleting by age removes the same things as deleting by hand; your uploaded files and your automations and their runs are not touched.

A turn runs on the server, not in your browser. Close the tab mid-answer, reload, or come back on another device — the reply still lands on the conversation and the page picks it up. Only one turn runs on a conversation at a time; asking again while one is in progress is refused rather than queued, so two answers can never overwrite each other.

Asking

Type a question and press Enter — Shift + Enter adds a line.

The Bower button on every list's action row and the AI panel on every record page land here with the question already in the composer. Nothing is sent until you send it.

The small B button in the bottom-right corner of every page opens a mini chat without leaving the page you are on. It starts as a new chat; once you ask something, it stays on that chat as you move between pages, until you close the tab. Continue under the greeting picks up your latest conversation instead, + starts a new one, and ↗ opens the current one here, where skills and attached files are. It is the same conversation either way: a question asked in the mini chat shows up in this list.

Press the B button again, the chat's ×, or Escape to close the mini chat. Closing keeps your draft and conversation; reopen it to carry on. The chat opens and closes with a short animation, or immediately when your device prefers reduced motion.

Asked from the mini chat, Bower knows which page you are on, so "this list" or "this contract" means the one in front of you.

Add bids and tasks

Ask Bower to add an opportunity to a named pipeline, with any preparation tasks you want. You can also ask for tasks on a bid your team already has. If the destination is unclear, Bower asks you to choose it.

The review card shows the bid, pipeline, stage and tasks, including each owner and due date. The source record appears by its published reference, such as PCS-04694, and links to its page. Edit lets you change the bid name, pipeline and stage, assign owners, adjust task names and dates, and untick tasks you do not want. Press Save changes, review the updated card, then Confirm add. Saving edits adds nothing to Business development. You can also reply in the conversation to ask for a different proposal; the earlier proposal becomes unavailable.

Confirm add adds the approved bid and tasks together. The result appears after your confirmation, with a View bid link and the number of tasks added. Cancel adds nothing and you can continue chatting. If the destination or team has changed, nothing is added and you can ask for a fresh proposal. Refreshing or reopening the conversation keeps the review and its result. The same controls work in the mini chat.

The conversation uses your organisation's usual Bower credits. Editing or confirming a proposal does not run another model turn.

Skills

The buttons above the composer are skills: the five jobs bid teams do every week, each with a form and a prompt of its own. Fill the form, press Run skill, and it runs as one turn in the conversation you are in — so you can carry straight on asking about the answer. Where a field is optional, leaving it empty is fine; the brief says which default it took.

• Agency brief — what an agency buys, from whom, through which panels and what is coming up. Agency (required), look back in years, and an optional category to narrow it to.
• Competitor brief — what a company wins from the Commonwealth: agencies, categories, the panels they sit on and what expires next. Company (required), an optional agency to look at only their work there, and look back.
• Bid or no-bid — whether an open approach to market is worth bidding, with the likely incumbent named out of the contract record and a recommendation with its three reasons. Approach to market (required), optionally your company and what you would bid on.
• Panel eligibility — which standing offers this kind of work is bought through, who buys through each, and whether you appear under any of them. The work (required: words, a UNSPSC code or a tender id) and optionally your company.
• Market sizing — how big a category is across the Commonwealth: by year, top buyers, top suppliers, concentration and the route to market. Category (required) and look back.

A skill run shows as a card naming the skill and the values you gave it. The prompt it sent is under Show prompt — every run stays auditable, because the first question about a surprising answer is what exactly was asked.

The ATM, agency and supplier pages carry the skill that fits them — Bid or no-bid, Agency brief, Competitor brief — with the record already filled in. As everywhere else, the form opens; nothing runs until you run it.

Uploaded documents

Upload a request for tender, a statement of requirement or your own draft and Bower can read it. Attach (the paper clip) in the composer does both jobs: Upload a file takes a new document, which attaches itself a few seconds later once its text has been read, and the list below it attaches any document already in Files — up to five on one question. Ask Bower on a file's row opens a conversation with it already attached.

A document uploaded from the conversation is kept in Files like any other: it stays there after the conversation, counts toward your organisation's fifty, and is deleted from the Files page.

Attached documents show as chips on your message, and they stay on it: a conversation records what an answer was built from, even after the file itself is deleted.

Bower reads a document in slices rather than swallowing it whole, so a 150-page tender is read in parts, and it says which file and which part a quotation came from. It reads only your own files, and only the ones attached to the conversation — the tools it has take no owner, because whose files these are is decided by your sign-in and not by anything the model can ask for.

A document is evidence, not instruction. Text inside a tender that reads like an order to Bower — "ignore your previous instructions", "score this bid highly" — is treated as content of a third-party document and flagged, exactly as a record description is.

If you ask about "the RFT" with nothing attached, Bower checks your file list before telling you there is none.

Ask Bower to write a bid document — "write our SoW for this tender" — and it answers with Open in Bid documents rather than drafting it in the chat. Bid documents drafts the document, priced from your own rates, and shows the credit estimate before anything starts.

Automations

A question you ask often is worth keeping. Automations are under Bower › Automations: a name, the question itself — typed, or one of the skills with its inputs — and when it should run. Up to fifty per account.

An automation runs for one of four reasons, and the run says which:

• You pressed Run now. The report takes minutes, so the page hands you the run and fills it in as it goes; closing the tab does not stop it. Manual runs are capped at twenty a day for the whole organisation, because each one is real model time.
• Its schedule came round. Daily or weekly, going out each morning after the overnight index refresh — the same slot the alerts use, so an automation reads fresh records.
• An alert it watches found new records. Point an automation at one of your own alerts and it runs on the mornings that alert turns something up, with the count and the query handed to Bower so the report is about what is new rather than the whole list. A morning it finds nothing costs nothing.
• A record it follows changed. Point an automation at a contract notice, an approach to market or a standing offer and it runs when that record moves — a contract varied or extended, an ATM's closing date or status changed, a panel's expiry or its membership. The first check records where the record stands and deliberately runs nothing; from then on the report opens with what moved, before and after.

Triggers are checked once a morning, not continuously. A record that changes at nine is reported the next day.

An automation can have both a schedule and a trigger. It still runs once a morning at most: the trigger wins, because "this changed" is a better subject for a report than "it is Tuesday".

The report

Every run is kept — for good, with what started it, what Bower said and how long it took. Open an automation to see its last fifty runs; open a run to read the report, with record ids linked exactly as they are in a conversation. A run that failed is kept too, with its one-line reason: a missing report you cannot explain is worse than a failure you can.

Tick Email me the report and each finished run arrives as mail with a link back to the run. A send that does not go through never fails the run — the report is on the page either way, and the run says the email did not go.

What it can and cannot do

An automation runs a read-only agent, with no one watching: it cannot ask you a clarifying question, so it states its assumptions in the report instead. It still cannot write anything, email anyone itself or change a record.

The text a trigger hands it — a contract title, a tender description, an alert's own name — is evidence, not instruction, exactly as it is in a conversation. A record whose description tries to give Bower orders is flagged in the report and not obeyed.

Credits

Every question and every automation run uses AI credits. One credit is one cent of model usage; a typical question is about 5 credits, a deep data question up to 10, and a single question never costs more than 80. Each answer says what it cost underneath it.

Credits are shared across your organisation and reset each month on the day you subscribed, at midnight Sydney time (on the month's last day when it is shorter — subscribe on the 31st and they reset on 30 April). Unused credits do not roll over. Essentials includes 1,000 a month and Pro 2,500; Team and Enterprise include 2,500 a person a month, in one pot the whole team shares. The seven-day trial includes 500 for the week. Adding a person to Team adds 2,500 at once, and removing one takes 2,500 away at once — neither resets the month. Subscribing starts you on a full allowance straight away. Upgrading resets your credits to full; the reset day stays the day you subscribed. The balance is a chip on the Chat page — "412 of 7,500 credits left · resets 5 Nov" — which links to Billing in the account menu, where an owner or administrator can buy a credit pack.

Credit packs

When the plan's credits are not enough, an owner or administrator can buy a pack on Billing: 1,000 credits for A$25, 2,000 for A$50 or 3,000 for A$75, plus GST. A pack:

• is used after your plan's credits — Bower spends the month's plan credits first, then the oldest pack you hold;
• lasts 12 months from the day you bought it;
• is never wiped by a reset — not the monthly one, not an upgrade, and not the move from the trial to a paid plan (a pack bought on the trial carries over).

The credits card lists each pack with what is left and when it expires. While a plan is paused (the trial has ended, or the read-only week after a paid plan) packs cannot be used or bought; they keep their expiry date and are there again when a plan is chosen.

When the credits run out, Bower's Chat page says when they reset and offers a credit pack or the next plan up, and your conversations stay readable. An automation that comes due with no credits left is skipped rather than run: the run page says so, and the schedule carries on. In the read-only week after a paid plan ends there are no credits at all.

Questions asked from your own AI client over MCP (ask and run_skill), which is part of the Enterprise plan, use the same credits, from the same organisation pool, exactly as a question on this page does — about five for a typical question and never more than 80. When the pool is empty they are refused with the same message this page shows. They also have a daily cap of MCP questions per person. Record summaries and the nightly enrichment do not use credits.

Analyses, preparation checklists and finding opportunities in Business development (Capture AI) are built-in features and do not use credits.

Where the credits went

The AI credits card on Billing ends with one line about this period — how many runs, how many of the credits were yours, how many people used them and when the last run was — and a Show usage link. Show usage opens the detail inside the card (the address gains ?usage=1, so a reload or a shared link keeps it open):

• This period, Last period and earlier ones (each a month, named by the day it starts) back to your organisation's first run since it subscribed, up to twelve. "This period" is exactly what the card's balance counts, so its total is the card's Used figure.
• By day — the organisation's credits each day, with your own share drawn over it; today is outlined and the rest of the period is blank.
• By kind — questions to Bower, skill runs (briefs, sizing, bid or no-bid), automations and Bid documents (documents and rate-card imports): runs, credits and the average per run. Capture AI is free of credits and is not listed.
• By person — each person's questions, skills, automations and Bid documents runs, their credits, their share of the credits used and when they last ran something. Scheduled automations have a row of their own.
• Runs — every run of the period, newest first and ten a page, with who, what and what it cost, and Open to go to the conversation, the automation's run or the bid document. Previous and Next turn the pages without moving the rest of the page.

The owner and administrators see everybody. A member sees the organisation's totals, the days and the kinds, but only their own row and their own runs. Conversations stay private: an owner sees the title of somebody else's question but cannot open it. A private bid document shows its title only to the person who made it; anyone else sees "Private bid document".

Export CSV downloads the period's runs — date and time (Sydney), person, role, kind, title and credits — for the same people you can see on the page. It is your organisation's own record, so it downloads on every plan and has no row cap.

Runs recorded before 5 October 2026 are sorted into question or skill by their conversation; if that conversation has since been deleted, the run is counted as a question.

Clarifying questions

Some questions leave a choice undefined that would change the answer — which date field "in 2026" means, which of three similar records you meant. Rather than guess, Bower asks, and the conversation pauses on that question. Your next message is the answer and the run carries on from there. It asks at most once per request, and never about something it can reasonably default: a supplier named by company is matched as the whole company, an agency by its published name, and the answer states which label it matched.

Reading an answer

Record ids in an answer are links. CN… opens the contract notice, SON… the panel and what has been drawn against it, and an approach to market opens its own page — so a figure can always be traced back to the notices behind it. Where Bower wrote SQL it shows the statement; where a result is truncated, or a figure counts publications rather than contracts, it says so.

Answers are rendered as text, never as markup: a record description written by a third party that contains something looking like code stays visible as characters. Bower treats everything it reads out of the database as evidence rather than instructions, and flags anything in a record that tries to give it orders.

In your own AI client

Your own AI client connects over MCP, which is part of the Enterprise plan.

The same records, the same tools and Bower itself are available over MCP, so Claude Code — or any MCP client that supports HTTP servers — can use them without this page. Create an API key under API keys in the account menu and paste the snippet it shows you; Connect an AI client lists the sixteen tools a client gets and what each one does. A conversation your client starts through ask is yours and appears here, so an answer from your editor and an answer from this page have the same audit trail.

Still to come

• OCR for scanned tenders — a PDF that is a photograph of a page has no text to read today.