# Content brief template: a two-layer version that works for AI writers and people > A two-layer content brief template: standing rules in a knowledge base, a one-page brief per piece. Every field explained, plus a filled-in example. Source: https://contengi.com/blog/content-brief-template Author: Stefan Maritz Published: 2026-10-16 **TL;DR** - A content brief tells a writer what one piece needs to do. A good one fits on a page. - Split it in two. Standing rules like audience, voice, and banned phrases live in a knowledge base. The brief carries only what changes per piece. - The fields that earn their place are the angle, the source only you have, what the current results miss, and the questions the piece must answer. - Explain why behind each instruction. Anthropic's own prompting guide says context and motivation help Claude follow instructions, and freelancers respond the same way. A content brief template is only as good as what goes in the fields. Here is one split into two layers, why each field is there, and the one-line brief that produced the post you're reading. ## What is a content brief, and what is it for? A content brief is the instruction sheet for one piece of content. It tells the writer who the piece is for, what it has to achieve, what to say, and how you'll judge it. Think of it as the difference between telling a cab driver "take me somewhere nice" and giving them the address. Both get you in the car. Only one gets you where you meant to go. [Anthropic's prompting guide](https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/be-clear-and-direct) for Claude puts it in terms that apply to any writer. It describes Claude as a brilliant new employee who lacks context on your norms, and offers a golden rule: show your instructions to a colleague with minimal context, and if they'd be confused, Claude will be too. That's a fair test for any brief. ## Why split a content brief into two layers? Because half of what goes into a typical brief never changes. Your audience, tone of voice, banned phrases, approved sources, and default call to action are the same on Monday as on Friday. Retyping them into every brief wastes time, and the copies drift apart. So move the standing material into a brand knowledge base, a set of files the writer or the agent reads before every job. The brief then shrinks to what's specific to this piece. The brief and the knowledge base does different jobs, and each one gets better when it stops trying to do the other's. Here's a real example. The brief for this batch of posts was one line long: around 1,500 words, a TL;DR bullet intro, an FAQ at the bottom, subheadings as questions, and internal and external links. Everything else, from British spelling to the ban on em dashes, came from the knowledge base. Our guide to [setting up a brand knowledge base for AI](https://contengi.com/blog/how-to-set-up-a-brand-knowledge-base-for-ai) covers what goes in it. ## What goes in the standing layer? These are the files that load before any brief gets read. Keep each one short and specific. - **Audience:** who reads you, what they already know, and what they're trying to get done. - **Voice:** how you sound, with two or three paragraphs of your own writing as examples. - **Hard rules:** banned words, formatting rules, and anything legal or compliance needs. - **Approved sources:** the publishers you trust for statistics, and the ones you never cite. - **Defaults:** your standard call to action, author name, and internal pages worth linking often. If you work with freelancers, this becomes the onboarding pack. If you work with an agent, it becomes [context](https://contengi.com/blog/context-engineering) it reads every time. Same files, two readers. ## What goes in the per-piece brief? This is the template. Each field has a reason, and the reason is worth writing into the brief too, because Anthropic's guide says explaining the motivation behind an instruction helps Claude deliver what you meant. - **Working title:** a draft headline, so the writer knows the promise the piece makes. - **Target keyword and intent:** the main search term, plus what the searcher is trying to do. A keyword alone tells you the topic. Intent tells you the shape of the answer. - **The reader's situation:** one or two sentences on where the reader is when they land. "A solo founder who has tried ChatGPT for blogs and hated the results" beats "small business owners". - **The angle:** the one argument this piece makes that the current results don't. - **The non-commodity source:** the first-hand material only you have, like a customer call, your own data, or a mistake you made. Without this field you get a summary of page one. Our list of [sources for non-commodity content](https://contengi.com/blog/8-sources-for-non-commodity-content) helps fill it. - **What's ranking and what it misses:** two or three lines from a look at the live results. - **Questions to answer:** the questions people ask around the topic, taken from the results page and from your sales calls. - **Must-include facts:** each with its source link, so nobody has to go hunting or guessing. - **Internal links:** the two to five pages on your site this piece should point to. - **Format and length:** word count, structure, and anything like a TL;DR or FAQ. - **Definition of done:** how you'll judge it, whether that's a ranking target, a sales-call use, or replies on LinkedIn. ## What does a filled-in brief look like? Here's the brief for a post we haven't written yet, filled in from our own data. - **Working title:** content optimisation tools for small teams. - **Target keyword and intent:** "content optimisation tools", around 590 searches a month. The searcher wants to compare tools and pick one. - **Reader's situation:** a one-person marketing team with a blog that ranks on page two and no budget for an enterprise suite. - **Angle:** optimisation tools score content against the current top results, and that score is only one input. - **Non-commodity source:** we already rank at position 1.9 for this term with a post written for something else, which gives us our own search data to open with. - **Questions to answer:** what each tool checks, what it costs, and when you don't need one. - **Definition of done:** a dedicated page that takes over the ranking from the accidental one. Notice what's missing. No paragraph on our tone, no list of banned words, no reminder about British spelling. The knowledge base already carries all of that. ## How do you write a brief an AI agent will follow? Write instructions as things to do. Anthropic's guide suggests telling Claude what to do instead of what not to do, so "write in short paragraphs of two to four sentences" lands better than "don't write long paragraphs". Your hard rules file can still hold the bans, while the brief stays positive. Give the reason behind anything unusual. If the piece must avoid naming a competitor, say why, and the agent will generalise from it. Keep each brief field to a sentence or two. Long briefs get skimmed by people and diluted for models. And give the agent the source material itself. A [transcript](https://contengi.com/blog/how-to-use-transcripts-for-content) beats a summary of a transcript every time, because your own phrasing is the part an AI can't invent. ## How do you check a brief before it goes out? Run it through three quick tests. Hand it to someone who knows nothing about the project and ask what the piece will argue. If they can't tell you, the angle isn't clear. Then read it against [Google's guidance on helpful content](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content), which asks who made a piece, how, and why. A brief with an empty non-commodity source field will produce a piece with a weak answer to all three. Finally, check the definition of done. If you can't say how you'll judge the piece, you can't brief it properly. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the difference between a content brief and a creative brief? A creative brief usually covers a whole campaign, with objectives, audience, budget, and deliverables. A content brief covers one piece of content and goes deeper on keyword, angle, and structure. ### How long should a content brief be? One page for the per-piece brief. If it runs longer, the standing material probably belongs in your knowledge base instead. ### Do I need a separate brief template for AI writers? No. The same two-layer template works for freelancers and agents. Agents need the standing layer loaded as files, and freelancers need it as an onboarding pack. ### Who should write the content brief? Whoever owns the strategy. An agent can draft the research fields, like what's ranking and the common questions, but the angle and the source should come from a person who knows the business. That split is the core of [agentic SEO](https://contengi.com/blog/agentic-seo). ### Can AI write the content brief for me? It can draft most of it from search data and your knowledge base. Fill in the angle and the non-commodity source yourself, because those decide whether the piece says anything new.