Start with what you want to achieve, and Hamster connects the first Brief to a Goal and Initiative.
Most Briefs are born in chat. Hamster first asks what you are trying to achieve, reflects the answer as one Goal in the language you use, and confirms it. It then shapes the Initiative and drafts the first Brief in a child thread. Goal capture stays lightweight — no framework, Metric, or hierarchy setup is required before the Brief appears.
For example, “I want to build a login app for my lodge” is enough to start. In workspaces that support Goal creation from chat, Hamster saves the Goal. Otherwise, it carries the confirmed Goal in the conversation and continues into the Initiative and Brief without blocking.
You can also create a Brief without chat — from the Briefs list, from the CLI, or from the Hamster Chrome extension when you want to pin a URL to a new brief.
Describe the outcome in chat — Open a conversation and answer “What are you trying to achieve?” in your own words. You can drop attachments alongside the prompt — .fig files, PDFs, markdown, images, or pasted URLs.
Hamster confirms the Goal — It reflects your answer as one clear statement in the language you use.
Hamster shapes the Initiative and Brief — It immediately groups the work under an Initiative, then drafts the Brief in a child thread. The agent's reply includes a clickable Brief card so you can jump straight in.
Or click "New Brief" in the Briefs list — If you'd rather start from a blank document, navigate to Briefs in the sidebar and click "New Brief" in the top-right. A dialog asks for a title (up to 255 characters) and an optional description.
Open and edit — The editor opens with the AI chat panel alongside it, ready for your first prompt. The chat already has access to whatever the Brief contains, and everything saves in real time. At the bottom of the chat, next-step suggestion chips such as "Generate a plan" or "Refine the scope" guide what to do next.
If a would-be Brief implies many Tasks, multiple distinct deliverables, or work spanning more than a few days, it should be an Initiative. Each Brief should represent half a day to a day of work — enough to generate a Plan and ship a PR. If it would take longer, frame the outcome as an Initiative and split it into child Briefs.
The number of child Briefs emerges from analyzing the outcome, not a fixed default. If you already have an oversized Brief, chat can offer to promote it into an Initiative with smaller child Briefs. See Initiatives for the middle-layer model and full sizing guidance.
A descriptive title makes Briefs easier to find later. "Redesign the onboarding flow for mobile users" beats "Onboarding redesign."