Quick Start Guide

CrestBid is an on-premises AI bid intelligence platform. It runs entirely on your own hardware — no document ever leaves your network — and helps your team draft, compare, and refine winning bid responses faster.

This guide takes you from a fresh machine to your first generated response.

1. Get your license key

Sign up on the Download page and we email you a free 30-day evaluation key together with your exact install command — the command already includes your key, so there is nothing to configure by hand.

2. Install CrestBid

Paste the command from your email into a terminal (PowerShell as Administrator on Windows) and press Enter. The installer does the heavy lifting — Docker, AI models, and your license — and takes about 15–25 minutes, most of which is the AI models downloading. When it finishes, your browser opens http://localhost:3000 and you're in. See One-Command Install for the per-OS details.

3. Create a project and ingest knowledge

Create your first project, then add reference material — past proposals, capability statements, policies — to its knowledge base. CrestBid indexes everything locally. Upload the tender document itself and CrestBid extracts every question and requirement automatically.

4. Generate a response

Open Response Studio, pick an extracted question or paste a requirement, and generate a grounded first draft with source citations. Edit, accept, and the result feeds the Cognitive Flywheel so future drafts get sharper.