Solicitation to Routing Timeline to PI Kickoff Email: A Three-Prompt Chain in One Claude Conversation

What This Builds

A new funding announcement arrives and a PI says "we want to apply". Within the hour you need three things: a checklist of what the solicitation requires, a timeline of your office's internal dates worked backward from the sponsor date, and a kickoff email that tells the PI what is theirs, what is yours and when. This chain produces drafts of all three in one Claude conversation, with a stop after each prompt where you check the result before it feeds the next.

The chain never drafts any part of the application. The PI writes the science and the narrative. You make every decision about dates and rules, and Claude only arranges what you pasted and what you stated.

Prerequisites

• A Claude account on the Pro plan ($20/month) or a plan your institution provides. Total ongoing cost of the build: the plan, and nothing else.
• A solicitation text to paste. A published, public solicitation is the safest input. The workflow works just as well on the invented excerpt below.
• Your office's internal deadline rule and review steps written down, with the holidays or closures you want counted.
• A calendar open beside you for the date checks.
• Your institution's AI guidance read. If it restricts AI for proposal material, use only public solicitation text and an approved tool, or run the chain on the invented sample.

The Concept

Think of an assembly line with an inspector after each station. The first station turns a dense announcement into a table. The second turns your office's rules into dated milestones. The third turns the dated milestones into an email. Each station works only from what is on the belt, and the inspector (you) signs off before anything moves on. A mistake caught at station one costs a minute. The same mistake caught after the email is sent costs a PI's trust.

Running all three in one conversation matters because each prompt can refer to "the checklist above" and "the timeline above", so you paste the source text once. It also means an error in prompt 1 carries into prompts 2 and 3, which is why the checkpoints are not optional.

Before You Start: Data and Settings

• Follow your institution's AI guidance before pasting any real solicitation, proposal or award text. Many institutions have an AI use policy, and some sponsors restrict AI in their own processes. Use only a tool your institution approved for that data.
• Use codes, not names. Write "PI A", never the investigator's name. Leave out salaries, effort, personal details and anything export-controlled, classified, human subjects or patient related.
• Check the tool's data settings. Look at whether your chats and uploads are used to train models and how long they are kept. A free consumer plan may use chats for training unless that setting is off.
• Never paste sponsor portal credentials or bank details.

Build It Step by Step

Part 1: Start a Fresh Conversation

Open a new Claude chat. Select Opus 5.5 if your plan offers a choice. Keep the whole chain in this one conversation so each prompt can see the earlier answers.

Here is the invented solicitation excerpt used in the worked example. Every value in it is invented, including the page limit.

SPONSOR X PROGRAM, PILOT RESEARCH AWARDS (invented text)

Eligibility: Accredited universities and nonprofit research institutes may apply. An investigator may appear on only one application per round.

Due date: Applications are due Friday, March 12, 2027, by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Late applications are not reviewed.

Research Plan: The Research Plan is limited to 12 pages (an invented limit), including figures. References do not count toward the limit.

Required sections: Project Summary, Research Plan, Biographical Sketch for each senior person, Data Management Plan, and Letters of Collaboration where applicable.

Budget: Projects may run up to two years. Applicants complete the Sponsor X budget form and a budget justification of no more than two pages.

Submission: The authorized organizational representative submits through the Sponsor X portal. Questions go to the Sponsor X program officer named on the program page.

Part 2: Prompt 1, the Requirements Checklist

Paste this prompt and then paste the solicitation text where marked.

Build a requirements checklist from the funding announcement text below. Use only the text I paste. Make a table with four columns: Item, Requirement as written (quoted exactly), Where in the document, Notes.

Cover these items: eligibility, due date and time, page limits, required sections and attachments, budget instructions, submission method.

If the text says nothing about an item, write "not stated" in the quote column. Do not add a requirement from your own knowledge. Do not interpret anything or say whether any cost or activity is allowed. After the table, list questions to take to the program officer or my central office.

TEXT:
[PASTE SOLICITATION TEXT HERE]

For the invented excerpt, a good answer has a row per item with the quote, for example Item "Due date and time", quote "Applications are due Friday, March 12, 2027, by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time", location "Due date paragraph". It should list "not stated" for anything the excerpt omits, such as a font size or a page limit on the Project Summary. It should also raise questions such as whether letters of collaboration count toward any limit.

Checkpoint 1. Read every row against the solicitation and, for a real solicitation, against the sponsor's application guide, which Claude has not seen. Check that each quote is word for word, that no row carries a requirement the text does not contain and that "not stated" rows really are absent from the text. Fix the table in the chat if needed ("Row 3 quotes the wrong sentence, redo it") before moving on.

Part 3: Prompt 2, the Routing Timeline

Type the sponsor date and your office's rules in your own words. The rules below are invented for the example. Replace them with your office's real rules.

Using only the facts below, build a routing timeline worked backward from the sponsor due date.

Sponsor due date: Friday 2027-03-12.

My office's rules (invented for this example):
(a) The complete package reaches the central office 5 working days before the sponsor due date. Count back one working day at a time and do not count the sponsor due date itself.
(b) Department chair sign-off happens 3 working days before the date in (a).
(c) The draft budget and justification reach the central office 6 working days before the date in (a).

Working days are Monday to Friday. Closure: Friday 2027-03-05 is a closure day (invented).

For each milestone give the weekday name, the date as yyyy-mm-dd, and the day-by-day count that produced it so I can check it. Add no milestone and no rule beyond those given above. If something is missing, write "not stated". Finish with a short list of the milestones in date order.

The correct answer for this example:

• (a) Package to the central office: count back from Friday 2027-03-12. Thursday 03-11 is working day 1, Wednesday 03-10 is 2, Tuesday 03-09 is 3, Monday 03-08 is 4. Saturday 03-06 and Sunday 03-07 are weekend days. Friday 03-05 is a closure day. Thursday 2027-03-04 is working day 5. The milestone is Thursday 2027-03-04.
• (b) Chair sign-off, 3 working days before Thursday 03-04: Wednesday 03-03 is 1, Tuesday 03-02 is 2, Monday 03-01 is 3. The milestone is Monday 2027-03-01.
• (c) Draft budget and justification, 6 working days before Thursday 03-04: Wednesday 03-03 is 1, Tuesday 03-02 is 2, Monday 03-01 is 3, Friday 02-26 is 4, Thursday 02-25 is 5, Wednesday 02-24 is 6. The milestone is Wednesday 2027-02-24.

In date order: Wednesday 2027-02-24, Monday 2027-03-01, Thursday 2027-03-04, Friday 2027-03-12 (sponsor).

Checkpoint 2. Confirm every date on a calendar, including each weekday name. Count the working days yourself and compare with Claude's count. Check that the closure days and weekends were skipped and that the interpretation of "5 working days before" matches your office's habit. If a count is off, tell Claude which line is wrong and ask for the count again and then recheck. Dates in the email come from this step, so do not go on until they are right.

Part 4: Prompt 3, the PI Kickoff Email

Tell Claude who owns what. Use your own division of the checklist items. This is the example's division.

Write a kickoff email from me to PI A about the Sponsor X Pilot Research Awards application. Use only the dates in the timeline above and the items in the checklist above.

Include: the sponsor due date and the internal milestones from the timeline, the checklist items PI A owns, and the checklist items my office owns.
PI A owns: Project Summary, Research Plan, Biographical Sketch, Data Management Plan, Letters of Collaboration where applicable.
My office owns: the Sponsor X budget form, review of the budget justification, routing for approval, and submission by the authorized organizational representative.

Use [date] for any date that is not in the timeline, including the date I need PI A's draft. Do not write or suggest any content for the application. Do not state any rule, limit or deadline that is not in the checklist. Keep it under 200 words, plain and friendly, and end with [my name].

A good result looks like this (check the dates against your own timeline):

Subject: Sponsor X Pilot Research Awards: dates and who does what

Hello PI A,

Thank you for telling us you plan to apply. The sponsor due date is Friday 2027-03-12 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time. To make that date, our internal dates are:

- Wednesday 2027-02-24: draft budget and justification to my office
- Monday 2027-03-01: department chair sign-off
- Thursday 2027-03-04: complete package to the central office
- [date]: your draft of the Research Plan to me for a first look

You own the Project Summary, Research Plan, Biographical Sketch, Data Management Plan and any Letters of Collaboration. My office owns the budget form, review of the budget justification, routing and submission by the authorized organizational representative.

Questions about the program itself go to the Sponsor X program officer. Questions about our process come to me.

[my name]

Checkpoint 3. Edit the email in your own voice and fill every [date]. Read every line against the checklist and the timeline, confirm the owner of each item with your office's practice and check that nothing in it sounds like a ruling on what is allowed. Send it yourself from your own mail. Nothing here goes to the PI until you have read it all.

Part 5: Save the Chain

Copy the three prompts into a document with your office's real rules in prompt 2. Next time, start a new conversation and run them in order. Do not carry a conversation from one solicitation to the next, because earlier text can bleed into later answers.

Real Example Summary

Setup: one Claude conversation and the invented excerpt above. Input: the solicitation text, an invented sponsor date of Friday 2027-03-12 and three invented office rules. Output: a requirements table, four dated milestones and a kickoff email draft with one [date] left for you to fill. Time saved: the reading and re-reading of a new announcement, the calendar counting and the first email. The checkpoints take part of that back, and they are the point of the chain.

What to Do When It Breaks

• A date is wrong by a day. Ask Claude to show the count day by day, find the line where it skipped or double counted a weekend or closure, and correct it. Check against the calendar again.
• A quote in the table is not in the solicitation. Ask Claude to point to the sentence. If it cannot, delete the row. Remind it to use only the pasted text.
• Claude adds a rule or a limit you did not give. Tell it to remove anything not in the pasted text and to write "not stated" instead.
• The email promises something on the office's behalf. Delete the line. Replace it with a [date] or remove it.
• The conversation gets long and answers drift. Start a fresh conversation and paste the checked checklist and timeline back in.

Variations

• Simpler version: run only prompts 1 and 2 and write the email yourself.
• Extended version: add a fourth prompt that turns the timeline into calendar entries you type by hand.
• Different rules per sponsor: keep one saved version of prompt 2 per office rule set.

What to Do Next

• This week: run the chain on the invented excerpt, then on a public solicitation.
• This month: save your own version of prompt 2 with your office's real rules.
• Advanced: build the proposal deadline digest so the milestones also land in your weekly email.

Advanced guide for sponsored programs administrators. The chain drafts a checklist, a timeline and an email from text you supply. The PI writes the science. The authorized organizational representative signs and submits. Your office and the sponsor's current instructions decide every date and rule.