What would make a creative "brief tool" genuinely useful to you?

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Writing a good brief isn't a natural skill, I was never taught it, it's something I've had to learn along the way. And most people who commission creative work are figuring it out as they go, which explains why I've received stick drawings on scrap paper with the vaguest of instructions before as briefs. These so often lead to wasted back and fourth working out exactly what a client needs.

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One of the last things I made before I left Verve was a briefing form to help commission work from the design team. I used Power automate and Microsoft forms to create a simple form that spat out a formatted email to the design team with the information needed to quickly start work or provide a solid foundation for constructive conversations. But a form is still too rigid and fails to really catch the variety of projects that could be commisioned.

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I've been exploring how I can make this easier using Gemini, Claude and Make.com and I've created a tool to help with this. Claude allowed me to prototype something so quickly that would of taken me weeks or months to do traditionally. I did originally start with Gemini to do this but got stuck early and seemed to be stuck in a loop with the make flow and the best way to integrate it into Webflow. Switching to Claude and scrapping the use of inbuilt Webflow tools sped things up dramatically and 24 iterations later I have a working prototype I feel happy to test in the real world.

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I've got more ideas on what I could add to this tool but I don't want to get sucked into creating a something where there is no value and interest in it. It's too easy to feel like you're being productive with AI without actually creating value. So lets test it.

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AI allows Brief Builder to ask the right questions, in the right order, so by the end you have a brief that's clear, complete, and gives your creative the best possible start. It's live now and o0pen to the public and free to use (or until I run out of credits). Doing this I hope to see whether this solves a real problem for people. If it does I'll build on it. If it doesn't, I'll learn something valuable either way.

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I'll write another post in a months time once the trial is over with my findings and insight on the whole thing.