Briefed

Every freelance creative project starts the same way: a string of DMs, a voice note, maybe a screenshot of a Pinterest board. The client knows what they want but can't articulate it. You know what you need to know but don't want to send a 12-question email that feels like a tax form.

Thus I pondered about a tool that sends clients a guided form and gives back a clean PDF. Nothing radical. But everything that existed was either too enterprise or too shallow. I wanted something that felt like it was built specifically for creatives.

The brief form needed to be simple. I chose a multi-step layout - one batch of inputs per step, clear progress, no wall of fields. Clients tend to abandon long forms, so breaking it up was a much needed UX decision.

The public brief view (what the freelancer shares/references) is intentionally minimal. It needed to be printable, screenshottable, and readable in a Zoom call. The same goes for the PDF export.

For the dashboard I kept the information density low. Freelancers don't manage hundreds of briefs, but a handful of active projects at a time. I think a clean list with search and archive is enough.

Because I don't have any dev acquaintances, and I could only count on Claude Code to help me understand all of the back-end shenanigans, everything excluding the front was frustrating.

Getting Clerk and UploadThing to work together cleanly for example. I waded through a quagmire only to be humbled (it was a one-line fix).

A LOT.