Frequently Asked Questions

Brief AI turns a short intake conversation into a polished, structured client brief in under 60 seconds. You or your client answers a series of smart questions -- project type, goals, audience, timeline, budget range -- and Brief AI formats the answers into a shareable document with clear sections, a scope summary, and a built-in approval checkbox.

Think of it as the difference between getting a wall of rambling Slack messages from a new client versus receiving a two-page brief that any team member could pick up and run with. Brief AI produces the latter, automatically.

Brief AI is designed for independent creatives and small agencies that work on project-based engagements. The sweet spot is:

• Freelance designers, copywriters, and brand strategists
• Boutique agencies with 2-20 staff
• Web development shops onboarding new clients regularly
• Marketing consultants running discovery calls

If you currently use a Google Form, a Notion template, or a lengthy email thread to collect project details, Brief AI replaces all three with something your clients actually enjoy filling out.

No. Setup takes about four minutes. You create an account, connect your name and logo, pick your default project types (branding, web, copy, etc.), and your first shareable intake link is ready. There is no code to write, no API to configure, and no developer required.

The most technical thing you will do is paste the intake URL into your email signature or Calendly confirmation message -- and even that is optional.

You get a unique intake link for each project type you configure. Share it anywhere:

• Paste it directly into a new-client email
• Embed it as a button on your website
• Add it to your Calendly or Acuity confirmation message so clients fill it out right after booking a discovery call
• Drop it in a Slack DM

When the client submits, you receive a formatted brief by email and it appears in your Brief AI dashboard immediately. No polling required on your end.

Yes. Every question is editable. You can rename, reorder, or remove the defaults, and add your own custom questions. For example, a branding studio might add a question about brand archetypes; a copywriter might ask for three competitors the client admires. You can also mark questions as required or optional.

Pro and Agency plans allow you to save multiple intake templates -- one for brand identity projects, one for website redesigns, one for ongoing retainers -- and Brief AI serves the right template based on a dropdown the client selects at the start.

The free tier includes 5 briefs per month -- enough to test the product before committing. The Solo plan covers 30 briefs per month, which is more than enough for most independent freelancers. The Pro plan is unlimited. Agency plan is also unlimited and adds team seats.

If you hit your limit mid-month you will see a clear notification and a one-click upgrade prompt. We never cut off a brief mid-submission.

A Brief AI output is a structured document with the following sections (you can rename or hide any of them):

• Project snapshot -- one-paragraph summary written by the AI from the client's answers
• Goals and success criteria -- what done looks like from the client's perspective
• Target audience -- who the work is for, including any personas the client described
• Scope and deliverables -- a plain-language list, structured for easy copy-paste into a proposal
• Timeline and milestones -- key dates the client flagged
• Budget range -- shown as a band, not a hard number, so clients feel comfortable filling it in
• Reference and inspiration -- links or file uploads the client provided
• Open questions -- anything the AI flagged as ambiguous or worth clarifying before work begins

The finished document exports as PDF, copies as Markdown, or pushes directly to Notion or Google Docs.

The AI summary is a synthesis, not a replacement. It draws only from what the client entered -- Brief AI does not invent scope or infer budget numbers. The summary is meant to give you a fast read on the project so you do not have to re-read every raw answer before a kickoff call.

Every generated brief includes an "Open Questions" section that flags anything the AI detected as vague or potentially conflicting. Treat those as your prep notes for the discovery call. In our testing, the AI catches roughly 60% of genuine scope ambiguities that humans tend to gloss over in the excitement of a new project.

Before sending a brief to your team, spend 90 seconds on a quick review. The brief is your professional document -- the AI is your first-draft assistant, not the final author.

Yes. The intake form includes an optional file upload field that accepts images, PDFs, and documents up to 25 MB each. Clients can also paste URLs to reference sites, competitor examples, or inspiration boards. All attachments appear inline in the finished brief and are stored in your dashboard for 12 months.

Yes. Every brief is fully editable in your dashboard. You can correct typos, expand on a vague answer, or add notes from your discovery call before sharing it with your team. The client's original answers are preserved in a separate "Raw Intake" view so you always have the source of truth.

You can also send a brief back to the client for revision -- a "Request more detail" button generates a follow-up link scoped to specific questions rather than asking them to redo the whole intake.

Yes. Brief AI includes a built-in approval flow. After you review and finalize the brief, you click "Send for Approval" and the client receives a formatted brief with a checkbox at the bottom: "I confirm this brief accurately reflects the project scope and I authorize work to begin." Their timestamp and IP are recorded for your records.

This is not a legal contract, but it is a meaningful paper trail. Many Brief AI users report that the approval step alone reduces mid-project scope creep by over 40% -- because both sides have seen and agreed to the scope in writing before a single pixel gets pushed.

Brief AI has four tiers:

• Free -- 5 briefs/month, one project template, PDF export. $0 forever.
• Solo -- 30 briefs/month, unlimited templates, PDF + Markdown + Notion export, client approval flow. $19/month or $190/year.
• Pro -- Unlimited briefs, white-label branding, custom domain for intake links, Zapier integration, priority support. $49/month or $490/year.
• Agency -- Everything in Pro plus up to 10 team seats, shared template library, client portal, and API access. $149/month or $1,490/year.

Annual billing saves roughly two months compared to monthly. No contracts, no setup fees.

Yes. Every paid plan includes a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. You get full access to all features of the plan you select, including white-labeling on Pro and team seats on Agency. At day 14, you are prompted to add payment or automatically roll back to the Free tier -- we do not charge without confirmation.

Yes. Cancel from your account settings in under a minute. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period, so you retain access through the period you paid for. We do not offer partial-month refunds, but if you cancel within 48 hours of renewing and have not used the new period, reach out to support and we will make it right.

Your brief history is retained for 12 months after cancellation in read-only mode. You can export all your briefs as a ZIP at any time from the dashboard -- even after canceling. After 12 months, data is deleted per our retention policy.

If you downgrade from Pro to Solo, white-label settings are stored but deactivated. Upgrade again at any time to reactivate them without reconfiguring.

Yes. We offer a 50% discount on Solo and Pro plans for verified students and registered non-profit organizations. Email hello@brief.ai with a brief description and verification (student email or EIN) and we will apply the discount to your account within one business day.

Brief AI has native integrations with the following tools on Pro and Agency plans:

• Notion -- pushes the finished brief as a new Notion page inside a database you choose
• Google Docs -- creates a doc in a shared Drive folder
• Asana -- creates a new project with the brief contents as the project description
• Trello -- creates a card in the list you designate
• Linear -- creates a project with scope as the description

For tools not on this list, the Zapier integration on Pro covers over 6,000 apps. The webhook endpoint on Agency lets you pipe brief data wherever you want.

Yes. You get a hosted intake page at brief.ai/intake/yourname that you can link to from anywhere. On Pro plans you can map a custom subdomain so the URL reads start.youragency.com instead. We do not offer an iFrame embed because iFrame forms have poor mobile conversion rates -- the hosted page is optimized for mobile and renders better than most embedded forms.

Brief AI focuses on the intake and briefing step -- the stage before contracts and proposals. It pairs naturally with tools like Bonsai, HoneyBook, Dubsado, or Hello Sign: you use Brief AI to nail the scope, then copy that scope into your proposal in those tools.

On the roadmap: direct scope-push to Bonsai and HoneyBook so the brief flows directly into a proposal draft. If you use one of these tools and want early access, flag it in your account settings and we will notify you when the beta opens.

Brief AI supports intake submissions in 28 languages. The AI summary and structured sections are generated in English by default, but you can switch the output language in project settings. Supported output languages include Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Dutch, and Italian, among others. The "Open Questions" section is always generated in your configured output language, not the client's submission language.

Yes, on Agency plans. The REST API lets you create intake sessions programmatically, retrieve brief data as JSON, trigger approval flows, and push brief data to any destination. Full API documentation is available at the developer docs. Rate limits: 1,000 requests per hour on Agency. If your use case requires higher limits, contact sales.

Only you (and team members you explicitly invite on Agency plans) can see brief contents. Brief AI staff cannot access brief content. Infrastructure engineers can see encrypted blobs in storage but cannot decrypt them -- all brief content is encrypted at rest using AES-256. In transit, all connections use TLS 1.3.

We do not use brief content to train AI models. Your clients' answers are your data.

Data is stored on AWS infrastructure in the us-east-1 region by default. European Union customers on Pro or Agency plans can request EU-region storage (eu-west-1) for GDPR compliance -- contact support to enable this. We do not replicate EU-region data to US servers.

Yes. Brief AI maintains a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) available for download in your account settings. We support right-to-erasure requests for client data -- you can delete any individual brief and all associated client responses from your dashboard. Bulk deletion via API is available on Agency. Our full privacy policy is at brief.ai/privacy.

No. The AI model processes your client's answers only to generate the structured brief and the open-questions list. It does not store a copy of the answers post-processing, and the processed text is not used to improve the AI model. You can read the full data processing description in our privacy policy.

Support is available through three channels depending on your plan:

• Free -- email support with 3-5 business day response time
• Solo and Pro -- email support with next-business-day response, live chat during Pacific business hours
• Agency -- dedicated Slack channel with a 4-hour response SLA, quarterly onboarding review with a Brief AI team member

The help center at brief.ai/help covers the most common setup questions and integration walkthroughs. Most issues are resolved there without needing to contact support.

Yes. There is a public roadmap and feature-request board linked from your dashboard. You can upvote existing requests or submit new ones. The top-voted features each quarter are reviewed by the product team and included in the roadmap if they fit the core use case. We ship a meaningful update roughly every three weeks.

Email hello@brief.ai or start a chat from any page. We try to answer every email within one business day even on the free plan. If your question reveals a gap in this FAQ, we will add it here within a week -- this page is a living document.