June 22, 2026
Building ProposalIQ: AI Proposals for African Freelancers
How I built a full-stack AI proposal generator with Paystack, Resend, and public share links — deployed and live.
The Problem
African freelancers lose clients because their proposals look unprofessional or take too long to write. I built ProposalIQ to fix that — generate a full proposal in under 60 seconds.
The Stack
- Next.js — full-stack framework
- Prisma + MongoDB Atlas — database and ORM
- NextAuth v5 — credentials and Google OAuth
- OpenRouter — AI proposal generation with free-model fallback
- Paystack — NGN payment processing (Free/Pro/Agency tiers)
- Resend — transactional email
- nanoid — public share links
Key Features
- Multi-step proposal form with 7 pre-built templates
- Client management — save clients and reuse across proposals
- AI inline editing — select any text and rewrite, expand, shorten, or improve it
- Public share links so clients can view proposals without logging in
- PDF export with branded header
- Forgot/reset password flow with email verification
- Google OAuth sign in
The Deployment Journey
Deploying to Vercel required fixing TypeScript errors, adding prisma generate to the build script, and carefully managing environment variables. The OpenRouter free model list changes constantly so I built a fallback chain across 5 models.
ProposalIQ is live at proposaliq-five.vercel.app. It's the most complete SaaS product I've shipped so far.