Context
Pitchlab is a concept workspace - made with Lovable - built for the independent designers, developers, and small studios who lose hours every week shaping cold leads into proposals. It collapses two normally messy steps, scoping the project and writing the proposal, into a single AI-assisted flow.
Freelancers we observed shared the same pattern. Intake is ad-hoc - discovery happens across scattered emails, and important context like budget, timeline, and decision-maker only surfaces after a 30-minute call. Proposals are blank-page work - even with templates, every proposal is rewritten from scratch to match the client's language. The gap between lead and pitch is where deals die.
The two halves feed each other. You can't write a tailored proposal without good intake, and you can't get good intake without making the client feel like they're being taken seriously. Most tools solve only one side. Pitchlab is intentionally narrow - no CRM, no time tracking, no invoicing. Every screen exists to move a lead one step closer to "yes."
Process
How it works
The freelancer builds a short scope form for a service line (website, brand, etc.) and sends the public link to a prospect. The submission lands as an inquiry in the freelancer's inbox. One click turns the inquiry into a proposal draft, written in the freelancer's voice, which they refine by chatting with an AI assistant until it's ready to send.
Landing - one promise, no fluff
Sets one promise - Craft winning proposals, instantly - and gets out of the way. A serif headline with an italic accent, two card vignettes for the two halves of the product, and a moment of polish in the entrance animation. A single light travels along the viewport border on first load.
Sign in - one panel, two paths
A single combined sign-in and sign-up panel with email or Google. Every protected page is gated, so the right people see the right thing.
Dashboard - the morning view
The first screen after login. A personal greeting, four at-a-glance stats, and the most recent inquiries and forms. Built to answer one question in three seconds: what needs my attention today?
Inquiries - a skimmable inbox
A flat list, sorted by recency, with status pills - designed to be skimmable in five seconds. The detail view shows the client's submission against the questions they answered, with a single primary action: Generate proposal. The detail view exists to let the freelancer remember the lead and decide whether to draft.
Forms - reusable scope intake
Each form card shows the share link and a copy or open shortcut. Inactive forms stay visible so freelancers can re-activate seasonal forms without rebuilding them. The editor puts the share link at the top - the most-needed action - with title, intro, pitch context (which shapes the AI proposal style), an active toggle, and the question builder underneath.
The public form is the page prospects actually see. Branded with the freelancer's name, no Pitchlab marketing - a serious-feeling intake instead of "reply to this email."
Proposal workspace - the centerpiece
The most ambitious screen. Two panes: chat with the AI assistant on one side, the current proposal on the other. The chat keeps history so the freelancer can iterate - "tighten the opportunity section," "drop the maintenance retainer," "make the timeline 6 weeks" - and watch the draft update in place.
Drafts are generated against the freelancer's brand voice, the inquiry's answers, and the form's pitch context, so they sound like the freelancer - not a template. One-click export ships the proposal into email or a doc.
Profile - the brand that flows through
The freelancer's name, headline, services, and accent color. These flow into the AI's drafts (so they sound like them) and into the public scope form pages.
Mobile - the whole app, narrowed
The sidebar collapses into a sheet, hero typography scales, buttons stack, and long links wrap cleanly. The two-pane proposal layout stacks chat above preview at narrow widths, with set heights so neither pane disappears.
Design system
The visual language is intentionally serious, dark, and quiet - closer to a lawyer's site than a SaaS dashboard. Serif display for headings sets the editorial tone, sans body keeps the data-dense pages legible, and italic accents in the brand color act as a single recurring motif. A small motion vocabulary: slow zoom on the hero, blur-in headline, staggered fades. Colors are set as design tokens, so the identity stays consistent across ten very different screens because nothing in the components hardcodes a color.
What's under the hood
AI-powered drafting - proposals and revisions are generated against the freelancer's brand voice, the inquiry's answers, and the form's pitch context.
Owner-scoped data - every freelancer sees only their own inquiries, forms, and proposals. The public scope form is the one deliberate exception, and it can only write to active forms.
Email handling - new inquiries trigger a notification email through a queued background worker with rate limiting, retries, and unsubscribe support.
Zero-config AI - no API keys to manage; the AI is wired in as a managed service through Lovable Cloud.
Outcome
Pitchlab proves how far a concept can go when the slice is tight enough to ship and big enough to feel useful. Form to inquiry to proposal is the whole arc - every screen earns its place. Designing access rules first meant the public scope form just worked when it was plugged in, and design tokens kept the serif dark identity consistent across ten very different screens.
A lesson worth keeping: empty states are half the product. Each list ships with a tailored empty state that nudges the next action - building those after the happy path was a mistake we won't repeat.
On the roadmap: send a proposal as a branded shareable link (currently export only), a templates marketplace so freelancers can share scope forms, lightweight analytics on which forms convert and which proposals get sent, and kickoff scheduling once a proposal is accepted.