Writing a good brief
Vague briefs get vague work. A good brief names the goal, who it is for, the context, the limits and what done looks like. Examples for each role.
Updated 2026-10-13
An employee starts by deciding what “done” looks like. The better you tell it, the fewer guesses it makes. This is the same shape Pytheus is told to use when it briefs your team.
The five parts
| Part | Say | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Goal and what it is for | What you want, and the decision it feeds. | Map our closest competitors so I can set a price. |
| Who the result is for | The reader or user. | Me, a solo founder choosing between £19 and £29. |
| Context | Links, files, what you already know. | Our site is example.com. We think Acme and Bolt are closest. |
| Constraints | Tone, budget, deadline, what not to do. | Public sources only. Do not contact anyone. |
| Done when | The deliverable and two or three checks. | A table of 8 competitors with sourced pricing. Each row has one weakness. |
Examples by role
| Role | A good brief |
|---|---|
| Researcher | Map 8 competitors of a booking tool for London personal trainers. For each: what they sell, who for, pricing with the source, positioning in one line, and one weakness. Put it in a table, then give me two things this means for pricing. Mark anything from a single source. |
| Outreach | Find 15 independent cafe owners in London who posted about staffing in the last month. Draft a first email to each, under 120 words, with one ask: a 15-minute call. Keep the list as a CSV with the signal and its URL. Do not send anything yet. |
| Writer | Rewrite our landing page hero in three variants for solo trainers who lose clients to no-shows. Use only claims we can prove from the notes attached. Give a one-line reason for each variant and say which to test first. |
| Engineer | In github.com/me/booking-app, add a rate limit of 10 requests a minute to the signup endpoint, with tests. Work on a branch and open a pull request. Tell me which commands you ran. |
| Analyst | From the attached Stripe export, model MRR for the next six months in three scenarios. Give me an .xlsx with live formulas, one chart, and the three assumptions that matter most. |
| Operator | Turn this week’s plan into a Notion checklist. Each item gets an owner and a date. Check what already exists in Notion first. Post nothing to Slack yet. |
Tips
- Say what not to do. “Draft, do not send” is a complete instruction.
- Attach the file instead of describing it. Employees read PDFs, Office files and images.
- Name the format you want. A deck, a sheet, a document, a site or an answer all have their own checks.
- Give a budget on big jobs so it stops and asks instead of running on.
- If the answer is wrong, say what is wrong. The employee keeps the context.
Related
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