A Brief keeps the deliverable and its business intent clear while the Technical Spec and Plan carry implementation detail into delivery.
A Brief is the team-aligned, business-facing account of what will ship and why it matters. It holds the title, description, intended outcome, scope, tags, status, alignment votes, and the delivery controls that carry the work to a pull request.
Briefs are where the Refine → Align → Deliver loop plays out. You refine a Brief in chat until the scope is sharp. You align the team by sharing it and collecting alignment votes. You deliver by pressing one button and getting a PR back, without leaving the brief.
Most Briefs start in chat: describe what you want, review the drafted Brief in its own thread, and refine the business intent with the team. The linked Technical Spec holds architecture and implementation decisions, then the Plan turns the agreed product and technical direction into Tasks.
You can deliver a Brief to GitHub directly from a conversation — just tell Hamster what to ship, and it dispatches the job inline, without leaving the chat.
The Briefs list also surfaces thoughts on stalled work. Open a card's thought to see what is holding the Brief up and what it could block downstream.
Use Display to group the Briefs list by Initiative or by Focus, then review the deliverables under each commitment. A Brief takes its Now, Next, or Later focus from the most immediate of its linked Initiatives, so you change focus on the Initiative, not the Brief. The Focus filter beside Status narrows the list to that focus and hides Briefs with no linked Initiative, which group under No focus.