Spitfire Cowboy Structured brief
Start here

Prepare a structured brief.

The fastest way to get a useful reply is to send a scoped problem with constraints, links, and a clear definition of done.

Seven questions

Keep this short. If the answer already exists in a repo, doc, or screenshot, link it instead of rewriting it.

  1. What are you building? One sentence. What is the product or system?
  2. What’s stuck? What specific problem brought you here?
  3. What have you tried? Tools, approaches, workarounds, partial wins, failures.
  4. What does “done” look like? Describe the shipped outcome, not the effort.
  5. Timeline. Hard deadline or flexible?
  6. Constraints. Budget, team, stack, compliance, platform limits.
  7. Receipts. Existing docs, repos, specs, screenshots, or prior work.
What happens next
  1. Draft the brief in your own words or start from the template.
  2. Email the result with links, screenshots, and relevant repos.
  3. Get back a scoped reply instead of a long discovery loop.