Project Taste Briefs

Preamble

A future agent inherits the task without inheriting the conversation. Project Taste Briefs make creative intent durable enough to survive that cold start and strict enough to be challenged.

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Chat Memory Leaks Taste

A project can lose its taste between sessions. The agent remembers the last conversation badly, grabs the nearest style default, and produces something coherent enough to pass a tired review.

The brief is the counterweight. It records what the project is allowed to sound, look, and feel like before execution begins. It also records what would betray the project even if the output looked polished.

The Contract Before The Surface

A useful brief names:

• the intended effect
• the references and their roles
• the motifs that may be borrowed
• the principles that should survive transfer
• the defaults to reject
• the surfaces where the taste must change
• the critique questions for the first output

The brief should be small enough for an agent to use and strict enough to create disagreement.

The How Is A Cold Start

The first useful brief can fit on one page:

project intent -> aesthetic lineages -> reference roles -> allowed transfers -> refusals -> review questions

An agent should be able to read it cold and say: this project can borrow editorial restraint from one source, tactile warmth from another, and blunt language from a third. It should also know that copying the source layout, using SaaS gradients, or making the copy too pleased with itself would betray the direction.

The latent question sits inside the handoff. Can intent live in an artifact after the conversation that created it disappears?

The First Inheritance Test

The first proof is a cold-start agent using the brief without the original conversation.

If the agent can explain the intended taste, generate a directionally correct first pass, and name what would count as failure, the brief is doing work. If it needs my memory to repair the premise, the taste never left the chat.

The unresolved pressure is inheritance. A brief protects intent from context loss. It can also freeze a project around taste that should have changed.