The Brief
When execution is abundant, the brief becomes the bottleneck. This reads yours the way an executor would and tells you what it will cost them.
What is being measured
A brief is the artifact that transfers intent to an executor — a colleague, an agency, or a model. It is scored on five dimensions, 0 to 4 each, and the Rigour Score is their geometric mean: strength on one axis cannot buy off neglect on another, because a brief with a luminous statement of intent and no constraints is not most of a good brief. It is one nobody can act on.
Is it unmistakable what this is for?
What the work is meant to achieve, stated so an executor could not reasonably aim at something else.
Is what must be true actually written down?
Budget, deadline, audience, platform, tone, dependencies, the things that are not negotiable — and the things that are.
Does the reader know why this matters and what happens if it fails?
The situation that produced the brief, who is affected, and what turns on getting it right.
Is there room to come back with something better than you imagined?
Whether the brief prescribes one solution or defines a space, and whether alternatives were considered and ruled out on the record.
Is it clear what has been decided and what is still open?
Which choices the brief makes, which it deliberately defers, and who owns the ones it leaves open.
Four kinds, one rubric
A creative brief is not a worse specification — it is a different thing with different obligations, so each is judged against the standard for its kind. That is also what makes comparison honest later: a percentile only means something among briefs of the same kind.
Handed to an engineer or a model, comes back as a built thing. A feature, a system, a change to something that runs.
Handed to a designer, writer or studio, comes back as a made thing. A campaign, an identity, a film, a piece of writing.
Handed to a researcher or analyst, comes back as a finding. A question you want answered, not a thing you want made.
Handed to a group who must choose, comes back as a choice. A recommendation, an options paper, a proposal to a board.
Nothing is saved to an account on the free tier, and you can score as many as you like. Keeping your briefs, revisions and comparisons is what the paid tier will add.