Brief Builder

Brief Builder is a guided drafting workspace. It keeps the brief in Markdown, reviews it as you work, and asks focused questions when important information is missing or conflicting.

Start a brief

Choose + New → New project → Use the Brief Builder. If direct project creation is disabled, New project opens Brief Builder immediately.

Select the client. Brief editing is unlocked after a client is selected. The first entry, Internal, is your own organisation: choose it for internal work. Internal briefs use your organisation library and brief templates, can staff anyone in your organisation, price with your base rate roles, and plan into a project with no client.
Select a brief template if the client has one. Runnit loads the template and fills an empty editor with its content. If you already added content, confirm whether you want to replace it. If the template cannot load, your current selection and draft stay unchanged so you can try again.
Name the draft so it is easy to find later.
Add or paste the starting brief in the editor.

Drafts save to your account and can be reopened after a refresh or from another device. You can keep several drafts open in tabs, archive drafts, and restore archived work.

Build the brief

The editor and guidance panel work together:

Write directly in the Markdown editor.
Answer guidance questions about missing details or conflicts.
Ask AI to suggest an answer, then review it before adding it.
Choose Refresh Questions after a major manual change.
Choose Refine Brief to improve the complete draft using the client, template, and guidance context.
Choose Undo Refine to return to the previous draft revision.

Changes are saved and reviewed automatically. During refinement, editing is temporarily locked so two review passes do not overwrite each other.

Steer the questions and refinement

Organisation administrators can shape this behaviour with the brief_builder_questions.md and brief_builder_refinement.md AI Directives, organisation-wide or with a per-client override. Use them to require certain questions, set the tone of the refined brief, or enforce house rules for every brief.

A template can still carry its own rules: companion files stored beside the template in the Brief Templates collection, named after the template with [guidance] or [refinement guidance] added before the extension. When a brief uses that template, its companion files take precedence over the directives.

Add files and voice notes

Choose Upload Files to add reference material to the brief. These files stay linked when the brief moves into planning.

If your browser supports speech recognition, choose Start Voice to capture talking points. Review the transcript, then append it or merge it into the brief. Always check names, dates, budgets, and client wording after a voice merge.

Advanced options

Brief Builder can also store client visibility and approval settings, link the brief to a master project, and skip resource plan generation when a project does not need the planning stage.

Create the draft project

Choose Proceed to Planning when the brief is ready. By default, the button waits for the current AI review or refinement to finish so Planning receives the latest draft. Organisation administrators can allow handoff during an AI review in Admin > Organisation Settings > Projects and AI planning.

Runnit warns you if guidance issues are still open, but you can choose to continue once the current review policy allows handoff. If the client has rate cards, select the one that should guide planned costs before handoff.

The next screen shows planning progress. Runnit analyses the brief, applies the organisation and client planning policy, reads the resource planning and project creation AI Directives (the client’s overrides win), checks eligible people and capacity, and builds an official draft project. Uploaded brief files remain linked to that project.

When planning completes, the draft project opens automatically. The original Brief Builder draft is archived after a successful assisted handoff. If you chose to skip AI planning, Runnit creates the draft immediately with the brief and no generated team or task plan.

Continue with Resource Planning to review the generated proposal in the project workspace.