Your First Artifact: A One-Page Project Brief

A project brief is one of the most useful things you can generate with AI — and one of the most reused. Write the prompt once, fill in the blanks, get a clean brief every time.

Here's the template. Copy it, paste it into Claude or ChatGPT, fill in the bracketed fields, and send.

The Prompt

You are helping me write a one-page project brief.

Here is what I know about the project:

PROJECT NAME: [name]
WHO IT'S FOR: [the audience or stakeholder]
WHAT PROBLEM IT SOLVES: [one sentence]
HOW IT WORKS: [one or two sentences on the approach]
KEY MILESTONES: [list them roughly]
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE: [measurable or observable outcome]

Write a one-page project brief using only the information above. Structure it with four sections:

1. Overview (2–3 sentences)
2. Problem (one short paragraph)
3. Approach (bulleted list of key phases or decisions)
4. Success Criteria (3–5 bullets)

Keep the total under 400 words. Use plain language. Do not add assumptions or invent details I didn't provide.

How to use it

Fill in each bracketed field with rough notes — don't overthink it. "Who it's for" can be as simple as "my manager" or "a client who runs a gym." The constraint that matters is something in each field. Empty fields produce hallucinated content.

The "What success looks like" field is the one most people skip. Don't. It's the field that keeps the output grounded and makes the brief actually useful.

Turning this into an artifact

After you run it once and edit the output, save the final prompt — not the brief, the prompt — somewhere you can find it. A doc, a note, a pinned message to yourself. That's your artifact.

Next time you kick off a project, you open the artifact, fill in the fields, and skip the part where you stare at a blank page.

If you find yourself adding a constraint ("never use passive voice") or a format detail ("always include a timeline section") after a few uses, update the artifact. It should get sharper over time.

What to do with the output

The brief Claude writes won't be perfect. That's fine. It'll be 80% of the way there in 90 seconds, which is the point. Edit the remaining 20% yourself — that's usually where the actual thinking happens anyway.

Send it to whoever needs context. Drop it into a project doc. Use it to kick off a kickoff meeting instead of showing up with nothing.