ever-works/orgs/app-brief

App Brief

An app brief is the layer between "the client wants a dashboard" and the first line of code. It commits the build to a stack, a surface area, and a definition of done small enough to check.

Writing the app brief

1. Restate the job in one sentence — who uses this app and for what outcome. If you cannot, the intake brief is not ready; send it back.
2. Inventory the surface. List every screen or page (for UI work) and every endpoint (for services): name, purpose, and the one thing that must work on it. Ten lines beats a wireframe nobody maintains.
3. Sketch the data. The three-to-seven entities the app manipulates, their key fields, and which screen reads or writes each. Mismatches between the screen list and the data sketch are scope bugs — fix them now.
4. Commit to a stack and record why in two lines. Default to the studio's boring, well-known choices; every novel dependency needs a stated reason and a fallback.
5. Mark the risk. Name the single hardest part of the build (an integration, an algorithm, a performance target) and how you'll prove it works early — the risky bit gets built first, never last.
6. Define done as a checklist: each screen/endpoint working as inventoried, fresh-checkout run documented, error and empty states handled, brief's constraints met.
7. List non-goals. What this build deliberately excludes, so "while you're in there" requests become follow-up Tasks instead of scope creep.

Review pass

• Could a different builder produce roughly the same app from this document? If not, tighten the surface inventory.
• Does every screen trace to the objective? Cut any screen that exists because dashboards traditionally have one.
• Is the risky part scheduled first?

Quality bar

• Two pages maximum; surface inventory as a table.
• No screen without an acceptance line; no entity without a screen that uses it.
• Stack choices are decisions with reasons, not lists of technologies.

Output format

Markdown: one-sentence job statement, surface table (name / purpose / must-work check), data sketch, stack + reasons, risk-first note, done checklist, non-goals. Version line at top.