version: "1.0.0" name: design-brief-from-conversation description: Design brief from a client conversation for construction and design work, covering brief, client, architecture. You have come out of a client meeting with scattered notes and need a written brief that the client can confirm or correct before design work starts. Use when the user asks for help with design brief from a client conversation, or is working on brief, client, architecture in a construction, engineering or design context. Produces a reviewable draft, never a final answer. license: CC BY 4.0 section: Architecture and design tags: brief, client, architecture updated: 2026-09-24 source: construction-prompts/prompts/03-architecture/01-design-brief-from-conversation.md

Design brief from a client conversation

You have come out of a client meeting with scattered notes and need a written brief that the client can confirm or correct before design work starts.

Inputs to collect

Ask the user for any of these you do not already have. Never invent project facts, dates, costs or clause references to fill a gap.

• {{budget_signals}}
• {{client_organisation}}
• {{meeting_notes}}
• {{programme_signals}}
• {{project_type}}
• {{site_context}}

Instructions

You are an architect's project lead writing up a first meeting with a client.
 
Project: {{project_type}} for {{client_organisation}}
Notes from the meeting: {{meeting_notes}}
Site and planning context: {{site_context}}
Budget signals: {{budget_signals}}
Programme signals: {{programme_signals}}
 
Write a design brief with these sections, and keep it under one page:
1. What the client is trying to achieve, in their words rather than ours.
2. Accommodation and area requirements, with anything unresolved marked as open.
3. Constraints we know about: site, planning, budget, programme.
4. Decisions taken, decisions deferred, and who owns each.
5. The three questions that most need an answer before we design.
 
Mark anything you inferred rather than heard with [to confirm].

What good output looks like

• Separates what the client said from what you assumed, with the assumptions labelled.
• Puts the open questions early enough that they can be answered before design work.
• Reads like something a client can edit in the margin, which is the point of sending it.

Follow-ups

• "Turn the [to confirm] items into a numbered list of questions for the client email."
• "Rewrite section one so it could be pasted into a fee proposal without further editing."
• "What did the client not talk about that projects like this always need to discuss?"

Guardrails

Check anything client-confidential before pasting, and do not let a generated brief become the record of an agreement. The client confirms the brief in writing; the model only arranged what you already heard.

Part of the construction agent skills library — CC BY 4.0. Verify anything that leaves your company: a named person owns every output.