Decision Brief

One prompt that turns a pile of open decisions into a single HTML file your stakeholders tap through on a phone in three minutes - then send back a machine-readable summary that updates the source of truth the same day.

It converts "please review this doc" (homework nobody does) into "tap 8 buttons" (done from a parking lot).

The problem

Alignment on decisions usually travels as a document. Documents get skimmed. Half the decisions end up made implicitly by whoever writes the next artifact, and the disagreements surface weeks later inside work that has to be redone. The bottleneck isn't the thinking - it's the reading.

The format

Already decided - a green box or two stating what's settled, so nobody re-litigates it.
One card per open decision - the question phrased as a sentence completion ("Revenue counts when..."), one line on why it matters, and 2-4 tappable options with the tradeoff written inside the option text. The recommendation is listed first and marked - opinionated but overridable.
Sticky bottom bar - a progress counter and a Copy decisions button that puts a plain-text numbered summary on the clipboard.

The copy-back summary closes the loop: paste it to your AI assistant and it ratifies the source-of-truth document in one pass. Alignment becomes machine-readable.

Try it

Two demo cards from a real use - ratifying operational metric definitions for a venture I co-founded (eleven decisions, all made the same day the brief went out):

1. A production batch with no recorded output counts as...

Why it matters: this decides whether missing data reads as failure.

2. "Revenue" counts when...

Why it matters: weekly revenue trending is meaningless if the team disagrees on when a dollar exists.

Copied - that summary is what you'd paste back.

The load-bearing details. The tradeoff lives inside the option text, so choosing IS reading. The recommendation goes first - respecting people's time without deciding for them. And every card carries a short machine-readable label, so the copied summary can ratify a document without a human transcribing anything.

The prompt

Paste this into Claude Code (or any capable assistant) at the point where a conversation or document has accumulated open decisions.

decision-brief-prompt.md

Build me a "decision brief" - a single self-contained HTML file that gets
busy stakeholders aligned on open decisions by tapping buttons instead of
reading a document.

Source: extract the open decisions from our conversation (or the doc I point
you at). Aim for 5-10; if more, split by audience.

Structure, in order:
1. Header: title, date, audience, and one line of instructions: "Tap one
   option per card; hit Copy decisions at the bottom and send the result
   back."
2. "Already ratified (for context)" - 1-3 short green-tinted boxes stating
   what is settled, so nobody re-litigates it. Omit if nothing is settled.
3. One card per open decision:
   - Heading = the question as a sentence completion ("Revenue counts
     when..."), numbered.
   - One line: "Why it matters: ..." - the cost of leaving it undecided.
   - 2-4 option buttons. Write the tradeoff INSIDE each option's text -
     never a bare label. Your recommendation goes FIRST, marked
     "(Recommended - <one-clause reason>)". Include a "Defer" option only
     when deferring is genuinely viable, and say what waiting buys.
4. Sticky bottom bar: a progress counter ("3 of 8 decided") and a "Copy
   decisions" button that copies a plain-text summary to the clipboard:
   a numbered list of "<decision name>: <chosen option short label>", with
   UNDECIDED for skipped cards.

Implementation requirements:
- Fully self-contained: no external fonts, images, scripts, or CSS.
- Light background, system font stack, max-width ~860px, generous padding.
- Selected option: blue border + check mark. One selection per card.
- Each card carries data-metric="<short name>"; each option carries
  data-label="<short label>" - these two attributes drive the copied
  summary, so keep the labels terse.
- Print CSS: -webkit-print-color-adjust: exact !important on everything;
  hide the sticky bar in print.
- Plain vanilla JavaScript only.
- Save it with a date-first filename (YYYY-MM-DD_<topic>-decisions.html)
  and open it in my browser.

Afterwards, when I paste a copied decision summary back to you: update the
source-of-truth document in one pass - replace each open item with the
chosen definition, delete the losing alternatives, mark it ratified with
name and date, and leave anything UNDECIDED as open.