For founders and business owners

Saying what a piece is about

A few sentences of your own before anything is written, so the first draft lands where you meant it to.

What it is

Pick what you are making and a short panel opens asking what this one should be about, naming the thing you chose, so a carousel asks about the carousel. You write a sentence or a paragraph in your own words: a customer you spoke to this week, a question you keep being asked, a decision you made and the reason behind it. Then the piece is shaped around what you said rather than around whatever the research suggested on its own.

Why it exists

Writing from your own research is what stops a post being generic, and it has one obvious hole in it: your research does not know what happened to you on Tuesday. Before this, a founder with something specific to say had to accept the arc that was proposed and then argue it back into shape one paid regeneration at a time, which is slow, expensive and a strange way to treat somebody who knew exactly what they wanted before they started.

Skipping is a real button

Most pieces do not need a brief, so saying you have nothing particular in mind takes one press rather than working out that leaving a box empty and using the other button does the same thing. Skip and a shape is proposed from your research, exactly as before. The button that uses your brief stays unavailable while the box is empty, so the two are never confusable.

Saying it costs nothing

Writing a brief and reading the shape that comes back are both free, and the screen says so while it works. The price of generating the piece sits on the button that generates it, before you press, and that figure is a ceiling rather than an estimate you might exceed. Changing your mind at the shape costs you nothing at all, which is the entire reason the shape is shown to you first.

Your words steer every part, not just the opening

The brief is read again for each part of the piece rather than glanced at once and forgotten, so a carousel's eighth slide is still about what you asked for. And it is kept beside the piece afterward, folded away until you want it, so you can compare what you asked for with what came back. That comparison is the useful one: it tells you whether the shape ignored you or whether your own brief was vaguer than it felt while you were typing it, and either way you can copy the words into your next piece.

A brief sets the subject, and cannot give orders

Your words are treated as a note from you about your subject, not as instructions to the writer. If something in the brief tells the writer to ignore everything else, or to invent a figure, that part is passed over and the piece is written about the subject anyway. Nothing in the finished piece ever mentions the brief, the instructions, or the fact that anything was attempted, because you should be reading your post rather than a note about your own note. A number you state in your brief is your own fact and can be written as yours, in your words. A number that appears in neither your brief nor your research does not appear at all.

Two thousand characters, and the limit is honest

Typing stops at two thousand characters rather than accepting more and quietly cutting it later, which is the version of a limit that wastes somebody's afternoon. If the shaping step fails, you are told it could not work out a shape and asked to try again in a moment, no half made piece is left in your list, and your words are still in the box when you reopen the panel, because retyping two thousand characters is the last thing to ask of somebody on the one error a screen invites them to retry.

The one kind that asks its own questions instead

An investor update has no brief box, because it already asks you for the things only you can know: this month's numbers, what is hard, the ask, and what is next. Stacking a second panel on top of that would turn the cheapest step in the product into a form. Only one panel is ever open at a time, so there is never a live start button sitting beside a kind you did not choose.

Common questions

Do I have to write one?

No. It is optional on every kind, and skipping proposes a shape from your research the way it always has. The more you say, the closer the first draft lands, which is the only reason to bother.

Does writing a brief cost credits?

No. Writing it and reading the shape it produces are both free. Generating the piece costs credits, with the price on the button before you press it, and you are charged that or less.

Can I tell it how to write, not just what about?

It will take the subject, the angle and what to emphasize. It will not take orders about ignoring its instructions or inventing figures, and it never mentions your brief inside the piece itself.

Can I see what I asked for later?

Yes. Your brief sits on the piece beside the shape it produced, folded away until you open it, and it goes on steering every rebuild of every part rather than being read once at the start.

Can I use a fact of my own that is not in my research?

Yes. A figure you state in your brief is your fact and is written as yours, in your words. What will not happen is a number arriving from nowhere: anything that appears in neither your brief nor your research is left out.

Try Saying what a piece is about

Describe your idea once, and the research, your documents, your prototype and your live page are all written from it. Starter is $55 a month, with fourteen days to change your mind.

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