3-Minute Pre-Submission Self-Audit — Catching Missed Items with OpenSeed plan-check

#What Is plan-check

OpenSeed's /tools/plan-check is a self-audit page designed to let founders catch missing items in their business plan before submitting it for AI review. No login required — you can start immediately, and the checklist walks you through the key review dimensions in order.

The tool's purpose is not to score your plan. There is a gap between a founder thinking 'I wrote about this' and 'a reviewer can actually read and understand what I wrote.' plan-check is focused on surfacing that gap.

The checklist is built around dimensions common to virtually every review: problem definition, market size, solution differentiation, team composition, execution plan, and financial projections. When assessing each item, the right standard is not just 'did I write something?' but 'is there evidence?', 'are there numbers?', and 'did I compare against competitors?' — only then will you get accurate results.

#Self-Audit Checklist Structure

The plan-check self-audit is divided into six dimensions. Each dimension contains specific sub-questions, prompting founders to verify the details they might otherwise gloss over with a vague 'I covered that.'

#Self-Audit vs. AI Review Results — Where the Gaps Come From

Checking every item in the self-audit does not mean those same items will pass in the AI review. Founders read their own plan through the context they already carry in their heads; the AI review reads only the sentences actually written on the page. That is where the divergence comes from.

The largest gaps show up in solution differentiation and market size. Founders check those items because they know they have a better product, but if the supporting evidence isn't on the page, the AI review flags differentiation as a weak point. The same is true for market size: founders often believe SAM and SOM figures are somewhere in the document, but in reality only a single TAM number appears.

The dimension with the smallest gaps is team composition. Team backgrounds are usually written out explicitly, so self-audit and AI review tend to align there. However, whether those backgrounds are connected to 'capability to solve the core problem' is a separate matter — if that link is missing, the AI review will flag team fit as a weak point.

#How to Use It — 3-Minute Pre-Submission Workflow

plan-check works best right after you finish a draft. If you check while you're still writing, you'll be checking against what you intended to write rather than what's actually there, which skews the results. Finish the plan first, step away briefly, then run through the checklist.

1. Open your business plan file alongside plan-check. As you go through each checklist item, find the corresponding content directly in the document — check based only on sentences that are actually there, not on memory or intent.
2. For each item you mark as present, jot down the page number or section name. This lets you trace exactly where a gap appeared when you compare against AI review results later.
3. List every unchecked item. If solution differentiation or market size are among them, address those dimensions first — they show the largest divergence in AI review.
4. After revising, run the OpenSeed AI review. Compare the items you checked in your self-audit against the items the AI flags. Any mismatch is a blind spot.
5. Once you have the AI review report, focus your revisions on the mismatched items. You don't need to rewrite the whole plan — in many cases, fleshing out the two or three dimensions with the largest gaps is enough to change the review outcome.
6. After revising, run plan-check again. Check whether your results have changed, and submit only the updated items for re-review.

#Frequently Asked Questions

Q. If my plan-check results look good, will the AI review score be high too?

The self-audit checks for the presence of items. The AI review evaluates their quality, logical consistency, and the persuasiveness of the supporting evidence. You can check every box in plan-check and still receive weak-point flags in the AI review. The two tools are not substitutes for each other — they are sequential steps.

Q. What types of business plans can I use plan-check with?

It works for both government grant applications and early-stage investor decks. The checklist structure covers the evaluation criteria used in both government programs and investor reviews. That said, emphasis varies by program type, so when you move to the AI review stage, the AI assigns reviewers suited to your specific application type.

Q. Can I submit without running the AI review?

The self-audit is a pre-filter. It catches obvious gaps, but the logical flow, evidence quality, and specificity of differentiation that reviewers actually assess are confirmed in the AI review stage. The recommended sequence is to pass the plan-check checklist first, then run the AI review.

#Moving to AI Review

Once plan-check has revealed the gaps, the next step is the OpenSeed AI review. You'll get concrete feedback on whether the items you filled in during the self-audit actually hold up in a real review, and which dimensions need further work. The review report includes item-by-item comments and improvement directions, so revision priorities are clear.