Set your direction in Hamster

You're building a company and need a lightweight system to set direction and keep your team aligned as you grow. This guide takes you from an empty workspace to your first Goal, Brief, and Plan in a week.

Who this doc is for

You're a founder or owner setting the direction for a new product. You want your first hires to know what they're building and why, without you writing a heavyweight planning doc. Start here, then create a Goal and a Brief — the two artifacts that turn your intent into work your team can pick up.

Pre-flight checklist

Before you start:

• Invite your co-founders or first hires when you have them. Hamster works solo and compounds as you add people — the alignment payoff grows with every teammate who reads from the same Goal and Brief.
• Spend five minutes on the difference between a Goal and a Brief so you know which you're creating first. A Goal names an outcome you want; a Brief scopes one piece of work.
• Have your business model or market focus top of mind. Your first Goal should name a metric that matters to the business.

Your first week

A concrete path from direction to delivery:

1. Create your first Goal. Name the outcome you're chasing — for example, "Ship the product to 100 signups." Attach a Metric so the team and the AI trade in the same number.
2. Write a Brief for your strategic initiative — for example, "Launch the MVP." A Brief captures the goal, the user need, the scope, and the success criteria. It's not a PRD and not a ticket; it's the artifact your team and the AI both read from.
3. Review with your co-founders and refine the language. You're done when a smart person who's new to your idea can read the Brief and understand what you're building and why.

Post-creation next steps

Once your Goal and Brief exist:

1. Link your Brief to the Goal you created, so it's clear how launching the MVP gets you to 100 signups.
2. Invite your team lead or PM to refine scope and surface blockers you can't see.
3. Decide: is this ready to plan, or does it need more discovery first? If you have a clear shape and aligned co-founders, it's ready. If you're unsure about the design or the market, do that discovery before planning.
4. If it's ready, generate a Plan and start assigning work. The Plan breaks the Brief into tasks the team — or a Cloud Agent — can execute, and you can deliver the Brief to a pull request when it's ready to ship.
5. Set a cadence to review progress. Weekly is right for most early teams; pick one and keep it.

Feature depth

Go deeper on the artifacts a founder leans on most:

• Goals — what they are, when to create one, and how to track progress against a Metric.
• Briefs — writing a strong Brief with a clear purpose and success criteria.
• Plans — how Hamster breaks a Brief into work, and what to check before delivery.
• Cloud Agents — delivering a finished Brief to a pull request without an engineer at the keyboard.
• Initiatives — grouping related Briefs under a Goal once you're running more than one thread at a time.

Sample first-week workflow

1. Monday: create the Goal "Achieve X metric."
2. Monday–Tuesday: write the Brief for your key initiative.
3. Wednesday: align with your team on scope.
4. Thursday: generate the Plan from the Brief.
5. Friday: assign the first tasks and set your review cadence.

Common pitfalls

"Should I create a Goal or a Brief first?" If you have clear strategy and direction, start with a Goal. If you're scoping one specific project, start with a Brief.

"How detailed does my Brief need to be?" Detailed enough that a smart person unfamiliar with your idea can understand what you're building and why. No more.