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Editing Briefs

Write, refine, and deliver — all from one workspace, with the AI chat alongside the document and a deliver button that morphs into a PR badge once the work ships.

Overview

The Brief workspace pairs a rich text editor on one side with the AI chat panel on the other. As you write, you can ask the AI to expand a section, suggest requirements, or critique the scope — and it works with the actual content of your Brief, not a summary. Multiple teammates can edit the same Brief at the same time, with cursors and changes appearing live.

Once the Brief is sharp enough to act on, you generate a Plan, hit Deliver, and watch the deliver button track the work all the way to a pull request — without leaving the page.

Brief editor with AI-populated document and conversation thread

How It Works

  1. Open a Brief — Click any Brief from the Briefs list. The AI chat opens on the left, the document on the right.

  2. Write and edit — Click into the document and type. The editor supports headings, lists, bold, italic, links, images, and the rest of the standard rich text set.

  3. Ask the AI for help — In the chat panel, ask for a rewrite, expansion, or critique. Mention @hamster to address the AI directly, or @teammate to bring a person into the thread.

  4. Drop in context — Paste a Figma URL or upload a .fig file and the agent reads the design context. Drop a PDF or markdown file and it gets indexed for the AI to reference.

  5. Switch tabs — The document panel has four tabs: Brief (the editor), Plan (parent Tasks and subtasks), Context (attached files), and Activity (alignment votes and history).

  6. Generate a Plan — From the Plan tab, generate a Plan from the Brief body. Progress streams live in the chat as a card; the plan-generation card stays in sync even if you navigate away mid-flight.

  7. Deliver — When the Plan is ready, click Deliver. Pick a repo and branch, optionally toggle "Auto-open draft PR," and confirm. The deliver split-button keeps spinning while the work is in progress, then morphs into a PR-state badge — "Draft #42," "Merged #42" — that clicks straight through to GitHub.

The Workspace Layout

The Brief workspace is two panels:

  • Left panel — AI Chat: The conversation thread for this brief. Use it to discuss, draft, and refine. Long replies and Plan generation move into child threads automatically so the main thread stays readable.
  • Right panel — Document: The Brief content and its tabs (Brief, Plan, Context, Activity).

Hide either panel using the column visibility controls. On mobile, the chat appears as a tab inside the document view.

Key Capabilities

  • Real-time collaboration: Any number of people can type in the same brief. Changes merge cleanly. Each person's cursor is colour-tagged with their name.
  • AI knows the document: The chat reads your Brief automatically. You don't paste content into chat — the agent already has it.
  • Mentions: Type @ to mention a teammate or the Hamster AI. Mentioned teammates are added to the thread and notified.
  • Attachments grounded in the Brief: Files you upload (.fig, PDF, markdown, images) and URLs you paste are extracted and indexed; the agent uses them when answering, drafting, or generating a plan. Pasted images survive the round trip and persist on the message.
  • AI image descriptions: Images placed in the Brief body are described in the background, and the description flows into chat answers, Plan generation, and search.
  • Auto-generated description: As you write, the Brief's short description (the summary on the card in the list) is updated based on the content.
  • Plan generation from chat or the Plan tab: When you ask the AI to Plan from chat, the flow runs in its own child thread with a live progress card. Plan-gen and Delivery cards land in whichever chat surface you triggered them from.
  • State-aware Deliver button: One button covers the whole arc — "Deliver," "Delivering…," "Draft #42," "Merged #42" — and the click target morphs to match. No separate Delivery tab; the state lives where you clicked it.
  • Opt-in draft PRs: Tick "Auto-open draft PR" in the deliver dialog to have the PR opened automatically. Leave it off and the Plan tab gives you a CTA that deep-links to a pre-filled GitHub compare page.
  • Reviewer read-only: Teammates with the Reviewer role see the Brief as fully read-only — no greyed-out controls, no cursor leaking outbound. They can still cast alignment votes and watch the document.
  • Recovers from interruptions: If you navigate away during Plan generation or Delivery, the cards still reach a terminal state when you come back. No more cards stuck on "in progress" forever.
Brief editor showing auto-generated summary updating in the sidebar as content is written

Tips

  • Structure your Brief with headings. The AI uses document structure to understand sections and gives more precise responses when you ask about a specific part.
  • Drop supporting material as context documents instead of pasting it into the Brief body. The Brief stays readable; the AI still has access to the details.
  • Move the Brief through statuses (Draft → Refining → Aligned → Shipping) as you progress so the team can see at a glance what's moving.
  • Ask the agent in chat to update the Brief status, log alignment, or pull a related Brief by tag. The agent has tools for all of those and will keep the document in sync.

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