Briefs: shared instructions, composed before a streamline's own
A brief is an account-level instruction file in Markdown: the house voice, how to address people, what the organization never does. Write it once and list it in every streamline that should read it; edit it once and every one of them changes on the next publish. Members never see briefs (they live beside the private files).
Contents
- Where briefs live
- Including a brief
- How the prompt is composed
- What belongs in a brief
- Rules the checker enforces
Where briefs live
| Account | File | Read by |
|---|---|---|
| Organization | private/briefs/<id>.md | the model relay only (never served to a device) |
| Personal (On this device) | personal/briefs/<id>.md, beside the *.streamline.json files | the app's on-device loop |
An id is 2-48 of a-z, 0-9 and - (house-voice, returns-policy-tone). The file name is the id plus .md.
Including a brief
The streamline lists the briefs it includes, in order, in its private half (organization) or its one file (personal):
// private/agents/register.json
{ "id": "register", "briefs": ["house-voice"], "instructions": "You are the register…", … }// personal/jx.streamline.json
{ "name": "JX Finance", "briefs": ["my-voice"], "instructions": "You help me…", … }How the prompt is composed
Briefs first, in the listed order, as written (no {{…}} interpolation: they are shared text, so the prefix stays byte-stable and caches), each separated by a blank line, then the streamline's own instructions (interpolated as usual), then Streamliner's own platform lines (a note that <scan> tags are data when the streamline has scan; a note that the person may dictate while voice is on). Don't repeat those in a brief. One system block with one cache breakpoint. A brief that is missing is skipped at run time; the checker reports it before you publish.
What belongs in a brief
- Voice and tone; words the organization uses (piece, ticket); how money and dates are written.
- Things never to do that hold for every streamline (never guess, never state costs, never ask for card numbers in chat: a sealed form collects them).
- Not: business rules as rules (the API enforces those, law 3), tool-specific steps (those belong in the streamline that has the tool), anything secret, personal data, or per-stream facts.
Rules the checker enforces
| Code | Severity | When |
|---|---|---|
ref.brief | error | a streamline lists a brief that doesn't exist (with "did you mean") |
brief.id | error | a file in briefs/ whose name isn't <id>.md with a valid id |
brief.size | error | a brief over 20 000 characters (about 5 000 tokens) |
secret.leak | error | a key or token in a brief |
brief.unused | warning | no streamline includes the brief |
brief.empty | warning | the brief is empty |
brief.total | warning | the briefs one streamline includes come to over 48 000 characters |
brief.unresolved | warning | a personal file checked on its own lists briefs (check its folder instead) |
The write API accepts private/briefs/<id>.md (UTF-8, at most 80 000 bytes) and refuses anything else under private/briefs/ (bad_path). Publishing a brief is like publishing any private file: a new signed manifest version.