Hand over the brief — not a blank wish.

Before you tell Claude to build anything, answer these. They map one-to-one to the things-to-consider from the session. The work your brain does here is the work AI can't do for you. Skip it and you get something pretty that's missing every fill-in-the-blank that makes it actually work.

What it is

The business case behind a build — goal, buyer, flow, connection, failure, scale — before a single pixel.

When to use it

Any time you're about to build a page, dashboard, hub, or artifact. Client work or your own.

How to use it

Answer every section. Then paste the whole thing into Claude as context before you ask it to build.

A blank wish builds something pretty. A real brief builds something that works.

The rule that makes or breaks it

Decide, don't discover

Don't open Design and "see what it gives you." Decide the answers first. The tool renders decisions — it doesn't make them for you.

Looks come LAST

Every question below comes before "what should it look like." If you're picking colors before you've named the goal, you're building backwards.

Be specific or it guesses

"A sales page" gets generic filler. "A page that books discovery calls for a $1,500/mo bookkeeping offer aimed at scared $200k–$2M owners" gets something real.

If you can't answer it

That's the gap. A blank here is a blank Claude will fill with a guess. Find the answer before you build, not after.

The Build Brief — answer every block

1 · The Goalstart here

★ What is the ONE thing this needs to do? Say it in a single sentence.
How will you know it worked? What's the number or action that proves it?
If this build could only do one job and nothing else, what's the job?

2 · Client Experiencewho it serves

★ Who exactly touches this? Name the person, not "users."
What do they feel before they land here? What do you want them to feel after?
★ What's the ONE thing they need to do next? (The single action.)

3 · The Offerwhat's being sold

What's the actual offer? Name it, what's included, the price points.
★ What's the one promise — the thing they get that they can't get elsewhere?
What's the pain they're escaping and the desire they're moving toward?

4 · The Flowbefore + after

What happens right before someone gets here? How did they arrive?
What happens right after? Where do they go when they say yes?
★ Where is someone most likely to get stuck or drop off? What catches them?

5 · The Connectionwhat it talks to

★ What does this need to talk to — CRM, calendar, payment, email, a database?
Where does the data live — inside an app (connector) or as loose files (folder)?
Does it need to remember anything between visits? Does it need to think (call AI)?

6 · The Objectionspre-handle the no

★ What's the #1 reason someone says no? Answer it on the page before they ask.
What do they not trust yet? What proof closes that gap?
What would make them hesitate at the very last step?

7 · What Makes It Failstress test

★ What's the most likely way this breaks — dead link, stale data, no owner?
Who maintains it after launch? What happens if nobody touches it for a month?
If the data feeding it goes wrong, how would you even know?

8 · Future Scalingthink ahead

Is this for one client or fifty? Does the build need to bend, or stay fixed?
★ In three months, do you extend this — or rebuild it from scratch?
What's the next thing this connects to once it works?

9 · Looks (LAST)only now

Now — and only now — what brand does it carry? Colors, fonts, voice, feel.
What's one reference you love? What's the AI-slop look you want to avoid?

Short on time?Do just the starred questions — the highest-signal answer in each block. You can fill the rest in once the build is moving. ★ = answer this one no matter what

The prompt — paste this with your filled-out brief

You are my build partner. Below is the full brief for what I want to build. Do NOT start building yet. First, read the whole brief. Then do three things: 1. Tell me back, in your words, what this build is FOR — the one goal, the one buyer, the one action. If you can't, the brief has a gap. 2. Name any blank or vague answer where you'd otherwise have to guess. Ask me to fill it before we build. 3. Tell me what this should and should NOT connect to, based on the brief — and whether it needs to remember data or call AI to do its job. Only after I confirm your read is right do we build — in chat first, structure and copy, no design. Then we move to Design. THE BRIEF: [paste your filled-out answers from all 9 blocks here]

Why this worksYou did the critical thinking the AI can't do. The prompt forces Claude to prove it understood before it builds — so it can't paper over a gap with something polished and wrong. That's the discernment layer most people skip.