5.2 · The briefing process
What each stage of a brief holds, from picking an angle through drafting, review and publishing.
Open any brief, the working record a page gets built in, and the sidebar shows the whole journey: Brief it (pick the angle, plan the outline), Write it (draft, review, polish, invite feedback), Ship it (title and meta, publish). The agent, the automated worker that drafts, does the production at every step; your inputs at a few specific points are what steer it. This guide walks the anatomy so you know which sections those are.
The brief itself exists from the moment you accept an opportunity, a researched and scored page proposal: acceptance is what creates it and lands it in Page Creation, with everything the research learned already filled in. (Rewrites and from-scratch briefs get created the same way from their own dialogs.)
Phase 1: Brief it
Pick angle and format
The first step is the brief's control panel: choose what this page is, who it is for, and how it reads.
| Section | What it does |
|---|---|
| Linked opportunity | Where this page came from, with the research behind it one click away |
| Article format | The content type. The outline is derived from it, following best practices for the format |
| Who it's for | The personas, the buyers the page speaks to, which shape framing and how Quality gets judged |
| Primary keyword | The query this page targets |
| What the searcher wants | The search intent in plain words. Worth a careful read: it is the page's job description |
| Additional directions | Your free-form steering: angle, claims to make or avoid, anything you need the agent to honor |
| Target length | Optional, e.g. 1,500 to 2,000 words |
The format comes pre-selected as your best chance of winning this opportunity, chosen from what actually ranks for it. The picker (grouped by funnel stage) has formats like Guide, Comparison, Listicle, How To, Case Study, and Ultimate Guide, and you can override the pre-selection whenever your judgment says otherwise. The default was earned, not guessed.
Plan outline
Click Generate outline and an agent researches the SERP and proposes a structure, in about 2 minutes. The outline is derived from the content type selected on the brief, and it follows industry best practices for that format: pick a comparison and you get a comparison's structure, pick a how-to and you get steps. Edit it freely: reorder, cut, add the section only you know matters. Structure fixed here is 10 times cheaper than structure fixed in a draft.
Phase 2: Write it
Drafted first version
The draft arrives with its receipts. 2 panels sit alongside it:
- Research: the background the agent gathered before writing, often thousands of words of it. Skim it when a claim surprises you, and use Export to copy the whole thing if you want it elsewhere.
- Activity: what the agent actually did to get from outline to draft: the deep research it ran, the sources it cited, the questions it asked along the way. Open it when you want to inspect the work, not only the output.
Together they make the draft auditable: every factual claim in it traces back to that research and to your context, the record of what GrowthOS knows about your company. When one does not, that is your cue to dig in.
From here the path is 5.3 · Reviewing and editing, then the shipping guide, each with its own guide.
Phase 3: Ship it
Adjust title and meta fine-tunes how the page reads in Google and when shared: article title, meta title, URL slug, meta description, and the cover image, with live previews of the Google result and social card. Then Publish. Both are covered in 5.4 · Polish and publish.
Where your attention pays
You do not need to inspect every section of every brief. The high-payoff points, in order:
- What the searcher wants, at the angle step. If the intent is wrong, everything downstream is wrong.
- The outline. Structure is cheap to fix here and expensive later.
- Article format, when the pre-selection surprises you. Check the linked opportunity's research before overriding.
- Additional directions, for the constraint the agent cannot know: legal sensitivities, a launch you cannot mention yet, the competitor you never name.
Common questions
Do I have to touch every step? No. A brief from a well-triaged opportunity can run from acceptance to review with zero input. The steps exist so you can intervene where you want, not because you must.
The draft made a claim I don't recognize. Check the Research panel first; the source is usually there. If the claim traces to wrong context (an outdated product fact, say), fix it in Context so it stays fixed everywhere.
Last updated at August 13, 2026