A practical companion to Emerging Principles of Agentic Design by Matias Vaara.
Use this with one design task you are working on. You can complete the brief yourself or ask an AI agent to help.
Give agents the knowledge and constraints they need. Start with a short brief and the sources relevant to the task. Mark what you know, what you assume, and what you still need to learn.
Explore broadly, steer with references, and refine with judgment. Ask for different approaches and their trade-offs before choosing one. Explain what to borrow from each reference, then review the working result and give specific feedback.
Turn individual experiments into shared team capabilities. Try a useful workflow with a colleague, improve the instructions, and keep an example of a good result. Agree who will maintain shared context and design resources.
The context brief from the talk: business problem, user needs, design and brand, scope and success.
Copy this template into your project notes. Keep each answer to a few sentences and link to relevant sources. You can leave gaps marked “unknown.”
PROJECT / TASK
What are we working on?
1. BUSINESS PROBLEM
What problem are we solving? What value should we create?
2. USER NEEDS
Who is this for? What are they trying to do?
What evidence do we have? What are we assuming?
3. DESIGN AND BRAND
Which references, guidelines or existing components should guide the work?
What should we take from each reference?
Which constraints must we respect?
4. SCOPE AND SUCCESS
What are we exploring or building? What is outside the scope?
What should this help us learn? How will we judge the result?
RELEVANT SOURCES
Link to the material needed for this task.
OPEN QUESTIONS
What do we need to clarify before proceeding?
Let an agent help you fill it in. Copy the template above into your AI tool with this prompt. Add your project idea and any relevant material you can share.
Help me complete this context brief for [project or task].
Ask up to five questions, one at a time, starting with the gaps
that would most affect the design. Use my answers and the sources
I provide. Keep facts, assumptions and open questions distinct.
Draft a concise brief using the template. Do not invent missing
research or requirements. Flag anything unresolved and ask me
to review the brief before you design or build.
Give specific direction: explain what the agent should take from each reference.