Write a first draft from a brief
Give it a brief and get a draft that follows your style guide.
Marketing · When you ask · Updated
Works with
- Slack
SlackHow do you write a first draft from a brief?
To write a first draft from a brief, send Maito the brief in Slack or by email. It follows your style guide, researches sources on the web, writes the draft to the length you ask for, and lists the claims it couldn't confirm so an editor can check them before it goes out.
How it's done today
Writer starts from a blank page and re-reads the style guide.
What Maito does
- Read the brief and style guide
- Research the topic
- Draft with sources
- List claims that need checking
Example
@Maito draft a blog post from this brief: 'How small teams run quarterly planning in a week', 1,200 words, for ops leads. Brief attached: planning-brief.pdf
Draft attached: planning-in-a-week-draft.docx. 1,180 words, second person, sentence-case headings, no superlatives, as the style guide asks. It has a 5-day structure and 4 cited sources. Three claims to check before it goes to Marcus: 1. 'Teams under 20 spend 3 weeks on planning' (section 1). I can't find the original; the post I cited quotes a 2024 survey without linking it. 2. 'OKRs were popularized at Intel' (section 2). The brief says Google. I wrote Intel, which is the usual account. 3. '2,400 teams use Northstar' (intro). The brief says 2,400, our company knowledge says 2,100 as of September. I used 2,100. Want a 600-word version for the newsletter?
Priya (10:30 AM):
draft a blog post from this brief: 'How small teams run quarterly planning in a week', 1,200 words, for ops leads. Brief attached: planning-brief.pdf
Maito (10:41 AM):
Draft attached: planning-in-a-week-draft.docx. 1,180 words, second person, sentence-case headings, no superlatives, as the style guide asks. It has a 5-day structure and 4 cited sources.
Three claims to check before it goes to Marcus:
1. 'Teams under 20 spend 3 weeks on planning' (section 1). I can't find the original; the post I cited quotes a 2024 survey without linking it.
2. 'OKRs were popularized at Intel' (section 2). The brief says Google. I wrote Intel, which is the usual account.
3. '2,400 teams use Northstar' (intro). The brief says 2,400, our company knowledge says 2,100 as of September. I used 2,100.
Want a 600-word version for the newsletter?
How to set it up
- Set up
Nothing to set up. Ask in Slack or by email whenever you need it.
What it won't do
Maito drafts. It can't know what's true inside your company unless it has been told, so every factual claim still needs an editor.
Questions
Yes. Share it once and Maito remembers it, or save the steps as a skill. It then applies it to every draft.
Yes. It lists the sources it used and flags any statistic it couldn't trace to the original.
Yes. Ask for a different length or channel, such as a newsletter version of the same post.
