Start here · Lesson 2 of 6
How do you get your first Brief?
Published June 9, 2026 · Updated August 14, 2026
Your first Brief comes out of the onboarding call. We connect GitHub together, build your first Teams by hand in the room, and invite your developers. By the time they sign in, the workspace already reads on real repository data, and the only thing left for each engineer is to get YAGNI Code.
What happens on the onboarding call?
Thirty minutes, three things. The GitHub App gets installed, workspace-wide, with your security lead in the room if you want the questions answered live. Your first Teams get built by hand, around the scopes you actually want carried: PR review, production watch, a domain that needs an owner. And your developers get invited. There is no setup ceremony to complete afterwards and no checklist holding the workspace hostage.
What does the workspace look like on day one?
Honest. If nothing is connected yet, the Front says exactly one thing: connect GitHub. Once it is connected, the page is composed from real data, and the only first-run trace left is a quiet, per-person line: get YAGNI Code. It disappears for each developer as their agent connects, and anyone it does not apply to can dismiss it.
When does the first Brief land?
Once GitHub is connected and the Teams exist, the first batch of work runs, and the Brief follows on an editorial cadence: a morning Brief, with midday and evening Briefs as the workspace warrants. A Brief is a dated snapshot of where things stand, composed so you can read to the bottom and be done. The Front is the same picture, kept current between snapshots.
What should you do with it?
Read it, then answer what is yours. The first Briefs will carry a few staged Decisions: a proposed ticket, a draft PR review posture, a rule a Team thinks it heard. Approve what is right, edit what is close, decline what is wrong. Those calls are the raw material of the Playbook, and a week of honest ones is worth a quarter of configuration. The next lesson, How does the Feed work?, covers the answering.
Common questions
Do I need to connect Gmail or a calendar to get started?
No. GitHub is the first and often the only day-one connection for an engineering workspace. Personal sources like a founder's inbox attach later, through Settings, with explicit consent, and a workspace-wide account never auto-attaches a personal source.
Can I set the workspace up self-serve?
The door is a conversation: book 30 minutes and we set it up together. It is genuinely faster than a funnel, the Teams come out shaped like your org instead of a template, and your security questions get answered by a person on the spot.
What do the first Briefs contain?
Real engineering work: the PRs reviewed and what the review found, what changed in the repos your Teams answer for, and the few Decisions waiting on a person. A Brief is a dated snapshot; the Front stays current between them.
How soon does real work show up?
The first batch runs as soon as GitHub is connected and the Teams exist, usually while the call is still going. PR review, repo questions, and ticket filing work from day one; autonomy beyond drafting is earned later, on the record.