Draft a Site Brief for your agents

MaintenanceBeginner~5 min

Before you start

Plugin version 1.8.0 or newer, which adds the Site Brief box to the Settings tab. Run it from a connection bound to an administrator: the plugin and theme reads need the activate-plugins and edit-theme-options capabilities, and on a lower-privileged connection the agent drafts from what it can read and marks the rest. The abilities listed above must be switched on in the Abilities tab; every ability starts off.

The Site Brief is a box on the Settings tab where you tell every connecting agent what your site is. It holds up to 1,500 characters, and the plugin sends it to each agent when its session starts. A blank box does nothing, and writing one from scratch is the part people put off.

Most of a good brief is already sitting in the site. The name, the language, what content it publishes, the categories, which plugins run it. This prompt reads all of that and writes you a first draft. It also leaves a bracketed gap for the things only you know, like your audience and your tone, instead of making them up.

The prompt
Help me write the Site Brief for this site. Read only: change nothing, and do
not try to save anything. I will paste the text into the Site Brief box on the
plugin's Settings tab myself.
Read what you can about the site: its name, tagline and language, the content
types it uses and how many items each has, the main categories, the main
published pages, the active theme, and any active plugins that shape what the
site does (a store, an events calendar, a course or forum plugin). If a read is
refused or unavailable, say so rather than guessing.
Then draft the brief as plain text, no markdown and no HTML, under 1,400
characters. Cover what the site is and who it is for, which content types and
categories matter and what each is used for, and anything an agent should
handle with care on a site like this one. Do not state anything you did not
read. Where the answer is something only I know, such as my audience, my tone
or my house rules, leave a short placeholder in square brackets for me to fill
in. Put nothing private in it: no email addresses, passwords, customer names or
internal URLs.
Give me the draft, its character count, and two short lists: what you read, and
what you left as a placeholder.

Why this is safe to run

Every ability here is a read. The agent looks at the site’s name, its content types and counts, its categories and pages, the active theme and the plugin list, and it cannot change any of them. The brief itself is saved from the Settings screen by someone who can manage options, and no ability writes it, so the draft stays a draft until you paste it in.

A few things are worth knowing before you paste. The Site Brief goes to every agent that connects, so leave out anything you would not want any of them to see. The plugin stores it as plain text and strips markup, which is why the prompt asks for plain text. And a model’s character count is an estimate, so read the draft once yourself. The placeholders are there on purpose: audience and tone are your call, and a brief that guesses them is worse than one that asks.

Already connected? Skip the paste. Ask your agent for the “draft a Site Brief” recipe, or just ask it to write a Site Brief from what the site says about itself, and it runs the same reads on your own install.

How it works

  1. Confirm the site name, tagline and language, then list the content types and count the items in each.
  2. Read the main categories and the published pages to see how the site is organized.
  3. Read the active theme and the installed plugins to spot what kind of site this is, such as a store or an events site.
  4. Draft the brief in plain text under 1,400 characters, with a bracketed placeholder wherever only you know the answer.
  5. Hand back the draft, its length, and a list of what was read and what was left blank for you to fill in.

Questions

Can the agent save the brief for me?
No. Nothing in the plugin's tool catalog writes the Site Brief. You paste the text into the Site Brief box on the Settings tab and save it yourself, which means an agent can never change the rules it is given.
Will every agent follow the brief?
The plugin sends the brief to each agent that connects, when its session starts. Whether the agent follows it depends on the client, so treat it as strong guidance and keep your permissions and switches as the real limits.
What if the draft is over 1,500 characters?
The plugin keeps at most 1,500 characters of plain text and cuts anything after that. The prompt asks for 1,400 to leave room for a miscount, but check the length before you save.