Turn a messy transcript, project doc, or pasted chat thread into a structured 5-bullet design brief - with a gap report for what's missing, for design teams and PMs kicking off new work.
design-brief turns whatever a team has scattered around - a call transcript, project doc, pasted freetext, chat thread - into a structured design brief: Problem, Audience, Success metric, Must-haves, Constraints. Its gap report keeps it honest: when the input does not answer the problem or the audience, the skill lists what is missing and stops, rather than writing a plausible paragraph to fill the hole. When a brief already exists and the project pivots, the change folds into the right bullet and the full brief re-emits, so a two-word directive never wipes the rest of the document.
- What it does
- Quick start
- Usage
- Example output
- How it works
- How is this different from just asking the model?
- FAQ
- Related skills
- Who maintains this
- Reads every source in the input - transcripts, docs, freetext, chat history - before asking a question, and never asks for a field already answered.
- Extracts a fixed 5-bullet brief: Problem, Audience, Success metric, Must-haves, Constraints.
- Refuses to build a brief on guesses: if Problem or Audience is absent from every source, it returns a gap report naming what is missing, then stops.
- Marks Success metric, Must-haves, or Constraints
(not stated - ...)when the input does not cover them, instead of guessing. - Handles incremental edits ("now it's B2C", "add constraint: iOS only") by folding the change into the right bullet and re-emitting the brief, unchanged elsewhere.
- Surfaces conflicting sources ("the doc says B2B, the transcript says B2C") instead of silently picking one.
Personal - available in every project:
git clone https://github.com/humbleteam/design-brief ~/.claude/skills/design-briefProject-scoped - checked into one repo:
git clone https://github.com/humbleteam/design-brief .claude/skills/design-briefAny other agent: the skill is plain markdown in the Agent Skills format. Paste SKILL.md into the system prompt of Cursor, Codex, or any LLM agent - no Claude-specific runtime required.
To verify: restart Claude Code and ask it to list its skills. Skills load from ~/.claude/skills/ (personal) and .claude/skills/ (project) - design-brief should appear.
- "Turn this call transcript into a design brief." (transcript pasted or attached) - reads it, extracts every bullet it can source, and gap-reports anything missing.
- "Here's our project doc - what's missing from the brief?" - runs the same extraction and returns the gap report if Problem or Audience is not covered.
- "Update the brief - we're now targeting enterprise buyers, not solo users." - an incremental edit: folds the pivot into Audience, leaves every other bullet untouched, and re-emits the brief.
Example project and notes are invented for illustration.
Input pasted by the user:
Notes from kickoff call, July 8:
- Client is a mid-size trucking dispatch company, 40-80 trucks per client.
- Dispatchers currently juggle 3 different spreadsheets to assign loads -
it's slow and error-prone, they miss delivery windows.
- Want something that cuts load-assignment time in half within the first
month of use.
- Needs to work offline in the truck yard where wifi is spotty.
- Must integrate with their existing ELD (electronic logging device) system.
- No budget yet for a native mobile app - web only for v1.
Skill output:
## Design brief - Pathfinder (dispatch scheduling)
- **Problem:** Dispatchers assign loads across 3 disconnected spreadsheets,
which is slow and causes missed delivery windows.
- **Audience:** Freight dispatchers at mid-size trucking companies running
40-80 trucks.
- **Success metric:** Cut load-assignment time in half within the first
month of use.
- **Must-haves:** Works offline in low-connectivity yard environments;
integrates with the client's existing ELD system.
- **Constraints:** Web only for v1 - no budget for a native mobile app.
_Source - Problem, Audience, Success metric, Must-haves, Constraints: kickoff
call notes, July 8._
- Read everything before asking anything. Freetext, docs, transcripts, chat history - all read before a field is marked missing.
- Two required bullets, three optional ones. Problem and Audience block the brief if absent; the rest get a
(not stated - ...)marker instead. - The gap report is one compact block, then a full stop. No partial brief gets built on a guess - a missing Problem or Audience triggers one gap-report block, nothing else.
- Audience and constraints need to be specific and checkable. "Users" fails; "freelance expedition guides booking 5-20 trips a year" passes. "Mobile-first, WCAG AA, no native app in v1" survives; "make it modern" gets dropped.
- Every bullet carries a source. A footer names which input and section each bullet came from.
- An incremental edit touches exactly one bullet. The directive maps to the bullet it changes; everything else stays byte-for-byte and the full brief is re-emitted - never a reply that reads as if the rest got deleted.
- Conflicting sources get surfaced, not resolved silently. A doc saying B2B against a transcript saying B2C gets named as a conflict, not silently picked.
A bare "write a design brief from this" prompt tends to paraphrase the input into one paragraph and invent a success metric or constraint that sounds reasonable but was never stated. Asking for an update - "now it's B2C" - usually rebuilds the brief from that one sentence, erasing the Problem, Must-haves, and Constraints it never repeated. This skill pins the structure to 5 named bullets, refuses to fabricate the two required ones, and treats an edit as a patch to one bullet, not a rewrite of the document.
What should a design brief include? 5 bullets: Problem (the pain or business need), Audience (a role, size, and behavior - not just "users"), Success metric (one observable outcome), Must-haves (3-5 non-negotiable features), and Constraints (2-4 enforceable limits like platform, accessibility, or budget).
How do I write a design brief from a meeting transcript? Paste or attach the transcript and ask for a brief. The skill reads it in full, extracts what it can source, and returns a gap report instead of a guess for anything the transcript never covers.
How do I keep a design brief up to date? Give the skill a directive naming what changed ("now it's B2C", "add constraint: iOS only"). It folds the change into the correct bullet, leaves the rest untouched, and re-emits the full brief.
Can Claude write a design brief for me? Yes, from whatever unstructured input you already have - transcripts, docs, chat threads, freetext. It will not invent a problem or audience it cannot source; those two fields trigger a gap report.
What if my brief is missing information?
If Problem or Audience is missing, the skill stops and lists what is needed. If Success metric, Must-haves, or Constraints is missing, the brief still gets built with that bullet marked (not stated - ...).
Part of a 10-skill open-source kit for design teams by Humbleteam.
- design-review - structured UX critique with a 0-4 score, Before/After/Why fixes, and a citation for every claim.
- ascii-wireframes - three distinct layout hypotheses as ASCII wireframes before any hi-fi work.
- html-mockup - census-first HTML mockups that match a reference screenshot: exact palette, item counts, component states.
- extract-design-tokens - pull palette, type, spacing, radii, and shadows from a URL or screenshot into CSS variables and JSON.
- audit-design-tokens - find token drift in a codebase: raw hex values, off-scale spacing, near-duplicate colors.
- design-qa - a pre-ship design QA gate: states, contrast, touch targets, breakpoints, keyboard paths.
- design-handoff - turn a finished mockup into a dev-ready spec: tokens, states, accessibility annotations, open questions.
- accessibility-audit - WCAG 2.2-grounded accessibility review with success-criterion citations and severity levels.
- ux-writing - interface copy that reads human: plain-verb microcopy rules and an AI-tell strip pass.
Maintained by Humbleteam, a design and AI-engineering studio that builds AI infrastructure for design teams. This skill is distilled from the internal playbooks we run on client work. Issues and PRs welcome.
MIT - see LICENSE.