Briefings
Help the user express their page vision as briefings that capture business intent. A briefing can be as lightweight as a single sentence of intent, or as detailed as final copy and image direction — the user chooses the fidelity.
When to use this skill
- The user wants to plan pages, write briefings, define audience or CTAs, or map shared sections across pages.
- The user asks to change, refine, review, critique, or iterate on any file under
stardust/briefings/**/*.md(including_site.md). - The user types
/stardust:briefings.
Do NOT use this skill
- For brand identity (voice, colors, typography). Hand off to
brand. - For structural wireframes or layout decisions. Hand off to
wireframesorprototype. - To render pages. Hand off to
wireframes(grey) orprototype(branded).
Pre-flight
Run the procedure in ../_shared/preflight.md first.
Contract
Needs (reads if present):
- User description of pages to plan
.impeccable.md(tone hints)stardust/brand-profile.json(voice; not required)
Produces:
stardust/briefings/_site.md(multi-page only)stardust/briefings/{page}.md(one per page; sole source of truth for page copy)
If missing:
- No input at all → ask the user which pages they need and start with the most important one.
- No brand-profile.json → briefings still proceed; tone defaults to neutral-technical.
Copy Ownership
Briefings own page copy. If the user wants final words baked in, put them in # Copy per section. Design will use those strings verbatim and will never rewrite them. Briefings without # Copy are valid — downstream skills synthesize on-brand copy and stamp provenance.
Phase 1: Scope
If no briefings exist yet:
- Ask the user: "What pages do you need? Let's start with the most important one."
- For multi-page sites, create
stardust/briefings/_site.mdfirst — see briefing-format.md for the site briefing schema. - Default to the structured shape for every page. Do NOT ask the user to pick a fidelity level. If a section's content is not known yet, emit
[TBD]in that section — downstream skills synthesize on-brand content for[TBD]fields and stamp provenance. Fidelity is a consequence of how much the user fills in, not a gate the user has to cross. Deepening the fidelity ladder:
- Structured (default) — full frontmatter + Intent + Audience + Key Messages + CTAs + Tone. Any field may be [TBD]. - Fully specified — adds # Copy (final headlines/body/microcopy) and # Imagery (image direction per section, source hints, alt-text). Reached by filling in those sections, not by re-answering a fidelity question.
If briefings already exist, read stardust/briefings/ and confirm which pages are covered. Ask which page to work on next (new, edit, or deepen by filling in [TBD] fields or adding # Copy / # Imagery).
Phase 2: Draft
- Run the soft-deps discovery decision before any interview question: If
/brainstormis registered in this session (detect per../_shared/soft-deps.md): hand off to/brainstormwith a seeded prompt that includes the page name and any existing briefing content, and ask it to produce the structured shape (Intent + Audience + Key Messages + CTAs + Tone). Wait for its output; use the result to populate the briefing. Do NOT run any inline interview question once this delegation is made — that would double-interview the user. Otherwise (superpowers not installed): announce the fallback exactly once per session, using the verbatim text from../_shared/soft-deps.md("superpowers announcement"). Then run the "For briefings discovery" pattern in../_shared/fallback-brainstorm.md. On every subsequent briefing in the same session, skip the announcement (already seen) and run the inline pattern directly. Either path uses the same discovery prompts: "What should visitors feel when they land on this page? What's the one action you want them to take?" The user must be able to tell which path ran — either by/brainstorm's visible hand-off UI or by the one-time announcement. Silent inline interviews are a bug. - Draft the briefing in the structured shape. Fill every section; where the user has not provided content, write
[TBD]verbatim (not a rephrased placeholder). The agent helps draft; the user owns the content. - Present the draft and wait for approval before writing the file.
- Write approved briefings to
stardust/briefings/{page}.md.
If any [TBD] fields remain, or the briefing was synthesized from a short prompt rather than a full conversation, stamp a provenance comment at the top of the file per ../_shared/skill-contract.md so downstream skills know which fields to treat as synthesizable.
Phase 2.5: Content Reuse Map (Multi-Page Sites Only)
Before the user moves on to wireframes, plan how pages connect through shared content. This is not just cross-links — it's content reuse: the same recipe card, testimonial quote, or capability highlight appears on multiple pages, authored once.
- Identify the main content types each page owns (e.g., recipes page owns recipe cards, stories page owns testimonials).
- Map where each content type gets reused as excerpts on other pages.
- Add a
# Content Reuse Mapsection tostardust/briefings/_site.md— see briefing-format.md for the table format. - Present the map to the user for approval before closing the stage.
Key principles:
- The homepage is a hub — it should pull excerpts from every major content page.
- Inner pages cross-link to at least 2 siblings through reused content sections (not just nav links).
- Reused sections show 3–4 items from a source that has more, creating "see more" motivation.
- Every reused section includes a CTA to the source page.
Phase 3: Approval Gate
This is a soft gate. The user may want to write briefings for some pages now and others later.
- After each briefing is approved, ask: "Another page, or are we done for now?"
- When the user is done, tell them:
- If stardust/brand-profile.json exists: "Briefings saved. You have brand + briefings — you can now run /stardust:wireframes." - If not: "Briefings saved. Run /stardust:brand when you're ready to capture your brand, then /stardust:wireframes to render these pages."
Pipeline automation: When invoked as part of a full pipeline run, auto-approve each briefing and continue.
Why Briefings Are Standalone
Briefings capture *what the experience should be* — intent, audience, messages. That work does not depend on having a brand. A user can:
- Write briefings first, then extract brand, then wireframe.
- Extract brand first, then write briefings, then wireframe.
- Write briefings without ever running brand (useful for scoping conversations or paper-only planning).
Keeping briefings independent lets teams split the work: one person captures intent while another extracts the brand.
Artifacts Written
| File | Description |
|---|---|
stardust/briefings/_site.md | Site-level briefing (multi-page only) |
stardust/briefings/{page}.md | Page-level briefings in the structured shape (Intent + Audience + Key Messages + CTAs + Tone), with [TBD] placeholders where content is not yet captured. May additionally contain # Copy / # Imagery when the user has committed to final words or image direction. |