The morning brief

The brief is the product’s signature scene — the one screen the owner is promised, every morning, instead of thirty tabs. It is not a dashboard. It is one earned number, a short list of yeses, the record of what already happened, and an ending.

Anatomy

• One hero figure. A single HeroNumber leads the brief — never a grid of KPIs. If the owner asked for one thing, the brief answers that one thing; everything else is a tap away, not a glance away.
• The yes queue. The two-or-three WorkCards that need a decision, each with its byline, each holding the hold. The queue is finite and says so.
• While you slept. The reversible work that simply happened, as short lines with provenance — the same record the audit chain keeps, quoted, never paraphrased.
• The ending. The brief closes with the mark and a full stop. Law vii is most visible here: the page ends, and the product tells you to go live your day.

The number, live

The hero figure carries the whole trust argument in one component. It rolls from the prior reading, never from zero — a figure that counts up from nothing reads as a slot machine. Its source prop is required: you cannot instantiate a hero number that isn’t backed by one. And the number itself is the receipt — tap it and it peels to its source.

• Quiet nights are stated, not decorated. When nothing changed, the brief says → no change · overnight in words. It never invents a wiggle to seem alive.
• Setup never shows zero. Before the first source connects, the figure reads Setting up. — a truthful sentence at 62% of the hero size, dimmed to --ink-secondary, not a false $0 that reads as failure.
• Stale is worn openly. A source gone quiet dims the figure to 55% and says last confirmed · reconnecting. The gate from components/figures holds here hardest, because the brief is read half-awake.

The list

Below the number, the brief is two short lists with one grammar between them: what needs you (the yes queue, hollow until held) and what already happened (filled, checked, reversible). Both quote the decision record verbatim — same times, same words. A brief that paraphrases its own receipts is a brief that can drift from them.

one HeroNumber per brief          — never a KPI grid
yes queue ≤ 3                     — more waits for tomorrow, honestly labeled
"While you slept", never "Activity log"  — the register is a person, not a system
every line carries a byline       — who did it, in their light
the brief ends                    — the mark, a full stop, "go live your day"

The voice

The brief speaks once a day, so it earns a warmer register than any other surface: it greets by name, counts plainly (“three things done, one needs you”), and never performs urgency. Its arrival is the one knock described in the pocket — the notification quotes the brief, and the brief honors the notification’s count exactly.