What is writing-vision-briefs?

A guided way to turn an early, unclear product idea into a Vision Brief: a short document explaining what to build, why it matters, and its scope.

Use it to explore an idea through questions, refine the brief, decide whether to proceed, split large ideas into features, and prepare the first PRD.

It helps clarify an idea before writing a PRD, a detailed product requirements document, and checks whether the idea is ready to pursue.

writing-vision-briefs — Skill for Claude Code by jamesgray-ai

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add jamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins --skill writing-vision-briefs

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install handsonai, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins/writing-vision-briefs/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins/writing-vision-briefs)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins/writing-vision-briefs"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins/writing-vision-briefs/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins/writing-vision-briefs"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins/writing-vision-briefs.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 54 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 4,170 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00054	$0.04170
Opus 5.5	$0.00022	$0.01668
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00011	$0.00834
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00417

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 6cf1b123a29f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-vision-briefs scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/handsonai/skills/writing-vision-briefs/SKILL.md · 387 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 387 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Vision Brief Workflow

Guide the user through capturing a fuzzy idea as a structured Vision Brief — a business-focused artifact that clarifies what they want to build and why, before diving into technical specs.

When to Use This Skill

User has an early-stage idea that isn't ready for a PRD yet
User says things like "I have an idea," "I'm thinking about," "what if we," or "I want to explore"
User needs help articulating what they want to build in plain language
User wants to validate an idea before committing to a full spec

Workflow Overview

Phase	Goal
1. Discover	Ask questions one at a time to understand the idea
2. Refine	Present the draft Vision Brief, iterate until solid
2.5 Evaluate	Go/no-go decision gate — assess and recommend next action
3. Scope	Assess the size — is this one feature or multiple? Break it down
4. Handoff	Save everything and guide the user to their first feature PRD

Phase 1: Discover

Ask the user questions one at a time. Use multiple-choice options when possible to reduce cognitive load. Wait for each answer before asking the next question.

Question sequence

Question 1 — The Problem:

"What's the pain point or missed opportunity you're trying to address? In a sentence or two, what frustrates you (or your users) today?"

Follow-up probe — Quantify the problem:

"Can you put rough numbers on it? How often does this happen, how many people are affected, what does it cost in time or money?"

If they can't quantify, that's fine — note it in the brief as a validation signal (e.g., "Impact not yet quantified — consider validating before building"). Don't push hard, but do flag it.

Question 2 — Who Feels It:

"Who specifically experiences this problem? What's their role or situation?"

Offer multiple-choice options based on common user types if the context suggests them. For example:

(a) End users / customers
(b) Internal team members
(c) Administrators / managers
(d) Someone else — describe them

Read the full file on GitHub · 387 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

references/vision-brief-template.md 6.2 KB

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

1mo ago Changed · -1 lines 6cf1b123a29f
2mo ago First seen · 388 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A 3d6299455e4a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-vision-briefs is a skill published in the GitHub repository jamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins (8 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 4,170 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Planning Writing and docs

writing-vision-briefs next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
writing-vision-briefsjamesgray-ai/handsonai-plugins	Skill	8	yesterday	MIT	A	54	Claude Code
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playwright-climicrosoft/playwright	Skill	99k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	19	Claude Code
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners	Skill	79k	4d ago	MIT	A	200	Claude Code, Codex
systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers	Skill	313k	3d ago	MIT	A	21	Claude Code
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	yesterday	MIT	A	95	Claude Code
next-partial-prefetching-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	yesterday	MIT	A	103	Claude Code