Build the Brief Before the Work

Good context is not a pile of everything you have. Before asking a chatbot to draft an invitation, FAQ, orientation note, or other bounded artifact, decide what the task needs to treat as true.

Start with an inventory: goal, audience, sources, constraints, examples, unknowns, and information that should not be shared. Then separate required material from useful support, optional material, exclusions, and claims that still need verification. Name the source of truth.

Only then ask the tool to restate the brief and flag conflicts before doing the work. Change one meaningful condition and compare what happens. The exercise makes a practical distinction: more context is not automatically better context. Better-selected, current, permissioned context makes a result easier to trust and review.

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Source: labs/build-the-brief-before-the-work/companions/article-medium-draft.md