# AI Agent RFP Template (2026)

> A free, editable RFP template for procuring AI agents. Issued by WorkForce
> (workforcebygriffain.com) — the AI labor benchmark. Methodology and supporting
> definitions: /methodology, /aqo, /wli.
>
> License: CC-BY-4.0. Use, fork, and adapt freely. Attribution appreciated.

---

## 0. Issuer

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Buyer | _Company name_ |
| Issuing team | _Procurement / IT / Ops / Legal_ |
| Primary contact | _Name, title, email_ |
| RFP issued | _YYYY-MM-DD_ |
| Questions due | _YYYY-MM-DD_ |
| Proposals due | _YYYY-MM-DD_ |
| Award target | _YYYY-MM-DD_ |
| Pilot start (target) | _YYYY-MM-DD_ |

---

## 1. Scope of Work

Describe the work the AI agent will perform — in the buyer's terms, not the
vendor's. Include:

- **Task category** (e.g. customer-support ticket resolution, code review,
  legal document review, lead qualification, meeting summary). Map to a
  WorkForce Labor Index category where one exists — this lets responses be
  benchmarked against the published market rate (`/wli/[category]`).
- **Unit of work** (per resolution, per PR, per document, per lead, per call).
  The unit of work governs the entire pricing model — pin it down.
- **Volume range** (low / expected / high) over the contract period.
- **Quality bar** (what "done" means). Use measurable definitions, not adjectives.
- **In-scope channels** (chat, email, voice, API, internal tooling).
- **Out-of-scope** (state explicitly — limits scope creep).

---

## 2. Evaluation Criteria

Vendors will be evaluated against these criteria, in this order of weight.
Buyers should publish the weights up front; vendors should respond against
each criterion individually.

| # | Criterion | What we will look for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | **AQO score** (Agent Quality of Output) | Independent, sealed-eval score against the WorkForce Eval bank for this category. Methodology: /methodology, /aqo. We require a verifiable score, not vendor-published claims. |
| 2 | **WLI delta** | Vendor's per-unit price vs. the published WorkForce Labor Index rate for this category (`/wli/[category]`). Material discounts and premiums must be justified by AQO. |
| 3 | **Methodology disclosure** | Does the vendor publish how their agent works, what data it was trained on, and how outputs are measured? Black-box pitches are downweighted. |
| 4 | **Outcome measurement** | How outcomes will be measured in production — and which party owns the measurement infrastructure. |
| 5 | **Refund / SLA enforcement** | What happens when the agent fails? Credit, refund, manual fallback? Time-bound? |
| 6 | **Security & data handling** (Section 7) | SOC 2 Type II, data sovereignty, retention, training-on-customer-data posture. |
| 7 | **References** | Three customers in a similar use case willing to take a 30-minute call. |
| 8 | **Pricing transparency** (Section 4) | Full price schedule, no "contact us" tiers. |

---

## 3. AQO (Agent Quality of Output) Requirements

We require an AQO score for this category. AQO is the WorkForce-defined
quality metric for AI labor (`/aqo`). Vendors should:

- Submit their agent to the free WorkForce Eval (`/eval`) and provide the
  signed, sealed AQO score for this category. The score must be from the
  current eval bank version.
- If a verified AQO score is not available, provide:
  - The vendor's internal quality bar and how it is measured.
  - At least one independent benchmark (HELM, SWE-bench, MMLU, vendor-specific
    public leaderboard, etc.) relevant to the task.
- Permit the buyer to run a sealed, holdout evaluation against the vendor's
  production endpoint during the pilot.

Self-reported scores without an independent measurement are not acceptable.

---

## 4. Pricing Transparency

We require a complete, published price schedule. Specifically:

- **Per-unit price** in the same unit of work defined in Section 1, expressed in
  USD. This is the figure that will be compared to the published WLI rate.
- **Volume discount tiers** (if any) — published thresholds and rates.
- **Minimum commitment** — monthly minimum, annual minimum, ramp schedule.
- **Overage rates** — per-unit price beyond the committed tier.
- **One-time fees** — implementation, integration, training, professional
  services. Itemised.
- **Pass-through costs** — foundation-model inference, infrastructure, third-
  party data. Stated as estimated unit cost, not buried in a margin.
- **Annual escalator** — capped percentage, contractually fixed.
- **Termination cost** — early-termination fees, data-export fees, decommission
  costs.

"Contact sales for pricing" disqualifies a response from this RFP.

---

## 5. IOSCO-Aligned Benchmarking Compliance

Where prices are quoted against a published benchmark — including the
WorkForce Labor Index — we expect responses to align with the IOSCO Principles
for Financial Benchmarks (2013). Specifically:

- Quoted benchmark rates must reference the **published methodology version**
  (`/methodology`) and the per-category page (`/wli/[category]`).
- Vendor-internal "indices" or "market rates" used in pricing must disclose:
  methodology, sample size, sample composition, update cadence, and governance.
- Vendor must commit, in writing, to not represent vendor-internal data as a
  market-wide benchmark unless it is independently verifiable.

---

## 6. Refund and Service-Level Policy

Specify:

- **SLA**: uptime, latency, throughput. Stated as percentile targets, not
  averages.
- **Output quality SLA**: AQO floor for the contract term. Material decay below
  the floor triggers a remedy.
- **Remedy mechanics**: service credits, full refund, contract termination, or
  switch-out. Time-bound (e.g. 30-day cure period).
- **Failure logging**: which party logs failed outputs, and who arbitrates.
- **Refund policy on per-unit failures**: do failed resolutions get charged?

A vendor unwilling to put quality into the SLA is not selling a product —
they are selling an experiment.

---

## 7. Data Handling and Security

Vendor must respond to each of the following:

- **SOC 2 Type II** — current report and date of last audit. Attach.
- **ISO 27001 / ISO 27701** — if applicable.
- **Data sovereignty** — where (region, country) is customer data stored,
  processed, and backed up? Can it be pinned to a single region?
- **Sub-processor list** — current list, plus notification policy for changes.
- **Training on customer data** — default opt-in or opt-out? Contractually
  enforceable.
- **Retention** — how long is customer data retained, in what form, and how is
  deletion verified?
- **Access controls** — RBAC, SSO/SAML, audit logs, customer-managed keys.
- **Incident response** — notification window (in hours), historical incident
  log, breach insurance.
- **Model cards / system cards** — published for the underlying model(s).
- **Prompt injection and jailbreak posture** — published red-team results or
  internal program description.

---

## 8. References

Provide three customer references in a comparable use case, each willing to
take a 30-minute reference call. Include: customer name, contact, deployment
date, scope, current monthly volume, and one quantitative outcome.

---

## 9. SLA Schedule (to be filled by vendor)

| Metric | Target | Measurement window | Remedy on miss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uptime | _99.9%_ | Monthly | _Service credit %_ |
| P95 latency | _x ms_ | Monthly | _Credit / cure_ |
| AQO floor | _x_ | Monthly | _Credit / termination_ |
| First response time | _x_ | Monthly | _Credit_ |
| Refund cycle (failed units) | _x days_ | Monthly | _Auto-credit_ |

---

## 10. Submission Instructions

- Submit a single response document covering Sections 1–9.
- Submit the AQO score / eval evidence as a separate signed attachment.
- Submit references on a separate sheet.
- Submit the price schedule as a separate sheet, in the unit of work defined in
  Section 1.

Questions: _email_ by _date_. Responses to questions will be published to all
participating vendors.

---

## Appendix A — WLI category mapping

If the scope of work maps to a published WLI category, include the category
page URL and the methodology page URL in your response:

- Category page: `/wli/[category]` on workforcebygriffain.com
- Methodology: `/methodology`
- AQO definition: `/aqo`

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_Template version 1.0 · 2026 · WorkForce · CC-BY-4.0 · workforcebygriffain.com_