# Where answers come from

**Category:** [RFP Responses](https://help.totalctrl.app/hc/totalctrl/totalctrl-help-center/en-US/categories/rfp-responses)
**Updated:** 2026-10-04

## Three sources, in order

Press **Draft answers** on a response and each unanswered question is worked through in a fixed order.

- **Your answer library.** If a question closely matches one a person has already approved, that answer is offered as-is, marked *From library*. No AI call is made — it is a human's answer being reused.
- **Your knowledge sources.** Otherwise we search the documents, pages, and notes you have added and write the answer from what we find, with the sources cited on the answer.
- **A person.** If neither supports an answer, the question is marked **Needs input** and left for someone to answer.

### Why it refuses

A model asked "what is your uptime SLA?" will always produce a confident-sounding number. That number reaches a buyer with your salesperson's name attached to it. So when nothing in your own material backs an answer up, the app says so instead of filling the gap — that flag is the feature, not a failure.
### Confidence and citations

Every AI-written answer shows what it was drawn from. The confidence figure is measured from how well your sources matched the question, before the answer was written; it is never a number the model was asked to give about its own work.
### Nothing is auto-approved

A draft is a starting point. It stays a draft until a person approves it, and re-running drafting never overwrites an answer someone wrote or approved by hand.

---

## Related Articles

- [Limits, plans, and boosters](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-limits)
- [Exporting your answers](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-export)
- [Reviewing, approving, and signing off](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-signoff)
- [Importing answers from past questionnaires](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-import-past)
- [The answer library](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-answer-library)

---
[← Back to TotalCtrl Help Center](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/)