Agent task briefing checklist — 10 anti-patterns (free)

If you hand work to an AI agent (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, custom agents), most failures trace back to the brief, not the model. Here are 10 anti-patterns I keep seeing, each with a one-line fix. Copy freely. Smell these in your briefs. Each wastes tokens, time, or trust. “Make it better.” / “Clean this up.” / “Explore options.” Fix: Name the artifact and the acceptance test. Tools say “repo write: Y” with no path limits. Fix: Allowlist directories; forbid .env, secrets, infra by default. “Research the market” with no table, memo, or decision. Fix: Definition of Done = files a human will open in a meeting. “Be exhaustive” + “max 10 minutes” + “cite everything.” Fix: Rank constraints; mark Hard vs Soft. API keys in the brief “for convenience.” Fix: Point to a secret manager / env name; never paste values. “Whatever you need to get it done.” Fix: Escalation table; stop conditions. No human owner → agent invents product policy. Fix: Owner field required; acceptance is a human step. “Write in our voice” with no voice doc or samples. Fix: Link 2 good examples or a 10-line voice sheet. “Confidence must be 95%.” Fix: Ask for source grades and assumption tags instead. Out of scope empty → agent expands forever. Fix: At least two explicit non-goals. [ ] Named artifact + acceptance test [ ] Tool/path allowlist; secrets referenced by env name only [ ] Hard vs Soft constraints ranked [ ] Stop conditions + escalation owner [ ] At least two explicit non-goals [ ] 1–2 examples for any "taste" task This is a free excerpt from a small set of briefing templates I sell. If you want the full fill-in-the-blank packs (briefing, eval, digest, research, incident), they're at https://briefstack.surge.sh/ — the list above is useful on its own either way.