BidLayer — the spec

A two-sided marketplace where small teams (2–10 people) post scoped jobs, collect competitive bids from contractors, and manage the work through to completion. Buyers control the process — they define the job, compare offers side-by-side, and approve milestones. Contractors win work by submitting clear bids with timelines and portfolio evidence. The whole cycle lives in one place.

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Decisions locked

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The core loop

1. A buyer creates a job post with a written scope and a budget range.
2. Contractors discover the open job and submit a bid with their proposed price, timeline, and relevant portfolio items.
3. The buyer opens the bid comparison table and reviews all offers — price, timeline, reviews, and portfolio — in a single view.
4. The buyer selects a contractor and opens a direct message thread to align on details.
5. Work begins; the buyer and contractor track progress against agreed milestones, with the buyer approving each one before the job advances.
6. Final milestone approval closes the job.

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v1 scope

Job Posting with Scope and Budget Range
A form where the buyer writes a job title, detailed scope, file attachments, and a minimum–maximum budget. Lives on the Post a Job screen; submitted jobs appear on the Open Jobs feed visible to contractors.

Bid Comparison Table
A structured table that surfaces every bid on a job — price, proposed timeline, star rating, and a link to the contractor's portfolio — so the buyer can evaluate without switching tabs. Lives on the Job Detail screen, visible only to the job's owner.

Contractor Bid Submission with Timeline
A bid form attached to each open job where a contractor enters their price, a milestone-by-milestone timeline, a cover note, and portfolio file uploads. Submitted bids feed directly into the buyer's comparison table.

Messaging between Buyer and Contractor
A per-job, per-contractor inbox that opens once a bid is placed. Keeps all negotiation and clarification in context, tied to the specific job rather than a global inbox. Lives on the Job Detail screen as a slide-in panel or sub-page.

Work Milestone Tracking and Approval
A milestone board drawn from the contractor's submitted timeline. Each milestone has a status (pending, submitted, approved) and a file-upload slot for deliverables. The buyer clicks Approve to advance the milestone; the final approval marks the job complete. Lives on the Active Job screen.

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Deliberately later

• Payment escrow and release — trust between buyer and contractor must be established first; wiring money into the product before the core loop is proven adds regulatory complexity that would stall v1.
• Contractor reputation and review system — requires a critical mass of completed jobs to be meaningful; building it on real data in v2 produces a better signal than seeding an empty system at launch.
• Search and filter by skill, location, rate — useful once the contractor supply side grows; in v1, every open job is visible to all contractors and the comparison table handles differentiation at the bid level.

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Data model sketch

• users — id, name, email, password_hash, role (buyer | contractor), avatar_url, created_at
• jobs — id, buyer_id, title, scope_text, budget_min, budget_max, status (open | active | closed), created_at
• job_files — id, job_id, uploader_id, file_url, file_name, uploaded_at
• bids — id, job_id, contractor_id, price, cover_note, status (pending | accepted | rejected), submitted_at
• milestones — id, bid_id, title, due_date, status (pending | submitted | approved), order_index
• milestone_files — id, milestone_id, file_url, file_name, uploaded_at
• messages — id, job_id, sender_id, recipient_id, body, sent_at
• portfolios — id, contractor_id, title, description, file_url, created_at

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Screens

• Home / Open Jobs Feed — lists all open jobs; entry point for contractors browsing available work.
• Post a Job — buyer form for scope, budget range, and file attachments.
• Job Detail (Buyer view) — shows job info, the bid comparison table, and the messaging panel.
• Bid Submission — contractor form for price, timeline, cover note, and portfolio uploads.
• Active Job / Milestone Board — tracks milestone status, deliverable uploads, and buyer approvals.
• Contractor Profile — displays rating, portfolio items, and bid history; linked from the comparison table.
• Inbox — consolidated view of all message threads across jobs, for both roles.

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How to use this document

• Bring it into Mind Palace, where the guided platform and its AI coach pick up from exactly this document and build the product with you, screen by screen.
• Hand it to a developer as the complete v1 brief — scope, data model, and screens are defined; nothing is ambiguous.
• Keep it as the single source of truth when priorities are challenged; if a feature is not in v1 scope, it is not in v1.