How to write a brief that gets it right the first time

A brief has the best chance of coming back right the first time when it answers five questions: what you want, who it is for, what done looks like, what to use, and what the limits are. Below are the five parts, the mistakes that cause a second round, three briefs rewritten from vague to usable, and a template to copy.

The rules are the same whether the work goes to a freelancer, an agency or an AI employee. Each of them sees only what you wrote. Whatever you leave out, they fill with a guess, and a guess is usually the most generic version of the thing.

The five parts of a brief

“What done looks like” is the part most briefs skip, and the one that saves the most time. “Make it look good” can't be checked; “the phone number is visible on a phone without scrolling” can. If you can't say how you will judge the result, the person doing the work can't aim at it either.

Constraints are everything that is already decided: the brand colour, the exact product name, a line your industry requires, words you never use. When the work goes to people, the deadline and the budget belong here too.

Six mistakes that cause a second round

• Describing the fix instead of the problem. “Add a pop-up” tells someone what to build; “visitors miss the lunch menu” tells them what to solve, and they may know a better way.
• Adjectives instead of criteria. Modern, clean, premium and friendly mean something different to everyone. Point to an example and say what you like about it, or write a line you can check: short sentences, no jargon, one button.
• Missing facts. Prices, hours, the address, the names of your products. Without them the work comes back with placeholders, and the next round goes on filling them in.
• Several jobs in one brief. “A website, three emails and some ads” is three briefs. Split them, and each one can be finished and checked on its own.
• No reader. Copy for first-time visitors and copy for regulars are different texts. Say who is reading, and on what screen.
• Hidden constraints. The brand colour, the legal line, the word your business partner hates: if it lives only in your head, it will be missed.

Before and after: a bakery's landing page

Before: “We need a landing page for our bakery. Something modern that brings in more orders.”

After: “A one-page site for our family bakery, for people ordering birthday and celebration cakes, mostly on phones. Five sections: a short offer (cakes made to order, three days' notice), six cakes with names and prices from the price list below, how ordering works in three steps, questions and answers, and an order form asking for the date, the size, the flavour and a phone number. Done means: the phone number and opening hours are visible on a phone without scrolling, and the whole page is under 500 words. Friendly and plain, short sentences. Keep our brown, #6B4226. Don't mention delivery: pick-up only.”

What changed: “more orders” became something a page can actually do, which is to make ordering a cake easy on a phone. “Modern” became lines you can check. And the facts the owner carried in her head (the notice period, the prices, no delivery) are now in the brief. For the rest of the job, from structure to copy, see a small-business landing page in a day.

Before and after: a booking form

Before: “Can you add a booking form to the clinic's site?”

After: “A booking form for our dental clinic's website. Patients use it to ask for an appointment; reception calls back to confirm, so it is a request, not a confirmed booking. Fields: name, phone, preferred weekday, morning or afternoon, the reason for the visit from a list (check-up, cleaning, pain, other) and an optional note. Done means: name, phone and day are required, with a clear message under any field that is missing; the form works on a phone; after sending, the patient sees ‘Thank you, we'll call you within one working day to confirm.’ Don't ask for date of birth or insurance details. Plain HTML and CSS, no outside libraries. Where the requests are sent is decided later; for now the form only checks the fields and shows the thank-you message.”

What changed: the brief says what the form is for, lists every field, says what happens when something is missing and after sending, and draws a line around personal data. Each of those would otherwise have come back as a question, or as a wrong guess.

Before and after: a launch email

Before: “Write an email announcing our new feature.”

After: “A launch email about shared calendars in our booking app, to customers on the free plan. One goal: get them to try a shared calendar this week. The facts: one calendar can now be shared with the whole team; it is included in every plan; setup is Settings, then Team, then Invite. Done means: a subject line under 50 characters plus two alternatives, a preview line, a body under 150 words and one button, ‘Try shared calendars’. Tone: like our last email, pasted below. Don't promise it saves time, and don't mention the paid plans.”

What changed: one audience, one goal, one button. The facts the reader needs are in the brief, the length is fixed, and a pasted email shows the tone better than any adjective could.

A brief template to copy

Fill in what applies and delete the rest. If the brief no longer fits on one screen, it is often two briefs.

WHAT: the one thing that should exist when this is done
FOR: who reads or uses it, on a phone or a computer, and what they already know about us
GOAL: the one thing it should help them do
DONE MEANS:
- a check anyone can make, e.g. the phone number is visible without scrolling
- length, sections or fields
- the tone in plain words, or an example we like and why
USE: facts, prices, names, existing text or code, pasted in rather than linked
CONSTRAINTS: what must not change or appear; colours; required legal lines
FOR PEOPLE ONLY: deadline, budget, file format, how many rounds of changes are included
BEFORE YOU START: ask me if anything above is unclear.

What to add for a freelancer, an agency or an AI employee

The five parts stay the same. What you add depends on who receives the brief.

With an AI employee the budget and the deadline drop out of the brief, and context matters more. Vott's employees, for example, can't browse the internet or open your site, files or repository; they work from what you write and paste. So paste the facts themselves, not links to where they live.

Asking for changes without starting over

A change request needs the same care as the brief. It works when it names the place, the change and the reason.

Say what works, too: “keep the three-step section as it is” stops a good part from changing in the next version. And send all the changes for one round together. Feedback that arrives in pieces turns one round into three.

Giving a task in Vott

In Vott, a brief becomes a task: one brief in, one result out, which is a document, a one-page website you can preview, or one code file. The six employees are AI agents, not people, and nobody at Vott checks the work before you do: you review it and decide.

1. 1Open the employee whose craft it is in Chat: Sofia for a landing page, Priya for an email, Mara for interface design. Not sure? Ask Iris: she names who should take it and writes a brief for you to paste into that person's chat.
2. 2Paste your brief. Or press New task, describe the work under What needs doing, pick someone under Who takes it and press Send to …; the brief arrives in that person's chat.
3. 3The employee sums the brief up in one line. If it is right, say so. The task appears on Tasks as In progress.
4. 4When it is ready, Activity shows Ready for your review and the task says Needs you. Press Details to see the result.
5. 5Check it against your done list. If it passes, press Accept. If not, press Request changes, write your list and press Send changes.

A task that fails isn't counted against your plan. The free plan includes one task a month, so ten minutes on the brief is time well spent. Two things the brief has to make up for: employees can't open your site or files, so paste in what they need, and they don't promise dates. More in How to write a good brief, Give your team a task and Review the work.