The starting brief
I run a design studio and want one place for clients to review work, leave feedback and approve a delivery. Right now files and decisions are spread across email threads.
- People
- Studio project leads and their clients
- Success
- A client reviews a delivery, leaves feedback and records an explicit approval in one place.
- Outside this first release
- Invoicing and time tracking
Requirements to review
- Create a project for a client
- Share a delivery for review
- Collect feedback against a delivery
- Record approval with the reviewer and date
Decisions that shape the implementation
Who can see each project?
Separate studio staff, project leads and client reviewers. Decide how invitations expire, what happens when a reviewer leaves a client company and whether a shared link requires authentication.
Which version does the feedback belong to?
Attach comments and approvals to an immutable delivery revision. A later upload should not silently replace the file the client approved. Define whether an approval can be withdrawn and how that is recorded.
How are shared files handled?
Choose accepted formats, size limits and retention rules. Specify what happens when an upload fails, a file is deleted or an email notification cannot be delivered. Notifications should point back to the authoritative project record.
Acceptance tests worth writing
- A client can open deliveries for their own project and cannot access another client’s project.
- Feedback remains attached to the revision the reviewer actually saw.
- An approval records the authenticated reviewer, delivery revision and time.
- Uploading a revision does not erase earlier feedback or approvals.
How to use this specification
Review the approval workflow with one project lead and one client. Decide which actions count as approval, who can reopen a delivery and what audit history the studio needs. Invoicing and time tracking are outside this starting template; add them only when the scope calls for them.
Review the guided draft’s assumptions, requirements and open decisions with the people who will use the system. Record effort estimates only after an engineer has examined the scope. A downloaded brief is a starting document, not approval to build or deploy software.
Download the working files
The JSON file can be imported through Build Brief’s “Import project” control. Markdown works in document editors and Git repositories; CSV gives you a requirements matrix; the agent task includes an explicit review-first engineering handoff.
Template edition: 21 October 2026. Published by Leemer Group. Guided drafting runs without an AI request; all generated proposals remain marked for review.