briefing

Produces a one-page briefing: a terse status or standup update for a recurring audience — a standup, a sync, a regular stakeholder update — who already hold the backdrop and need the delta and the next action, fast. It is harness-native: no named external body (ISO/NISO/ANSI/APA/etc.) prescribes a "briefing" format, so there is no domain standard to conform to here.

Pattern (one-page briefing / standup update)

1. Headline — one line: the single most important thing to know right now.
2. What's New — 2 to 4 bullets of the latest developments since the last briefing. Favor the delta (changed or new items) over restating what's already known.
3. Why It Matters — one line per item: the implication or so-what. Every "What's New" bullet is paired with one of these — there is no orphan update.
4. What's Next / Asks — the next actions, owners, and any decisions or inputs needed. Name something concrete; "continue monitoring" is not an ask.

Front matter carries a title, a date, and the period the briefing covers (since the last update). No figures are required — this is a one-pager; add a single status indicator only if it replaces a sentence, and render it as a Mermaid xychart-beta, never ASCII art or an image. A footnote/source list is the only back matter, and only when citation markers are used.

Rules

• Hard ceiling: one page. If it spills over, cut to the delta — the freshest, most decision-relevant items win over restated context.
• Lead with the change; do not re-explain standing background the recurring audience already holds.
• Every "What's New" bullet carries a paired "Why It Matters" line — an update with no stated implication is incomplete.
• Exclude claims known to be false; flag uncertain or weakened ones inline (e.g. "unconfirmed", "reportedly") rather than presenting them as settled.
• Account for everything the briefing is drawing from — compress to the delta, but never silently drop an item; note thin or uncertain ones instead of omitting them.
• Citations, when used, are inline markers ([1], [2]) or bare links resolving to a short footnote list — never raw internal identifiers in the body prose.

Anti-triggers — do not use this genre for

• A longer, standalone summary of a larger document for a reader who does not already hold context — that is exec-summary: it re-establishes background rather than assuming it, and isn't bound to a recurring cadence or a "since last update" delta.
• A curated, versioned history of released changes — that is changelog: entries are anchored to release versions, not to a standup cadence.
• A single already-made technical decision with its rationale on record — that is adr: immutable and driver-and-outcome shaped, not a status delta.

MIF frontmatter

type: episodic — a briefing is a time-bound record tied to a specific coverage period, not durable declarative knowledge. The L1 floor is id, type, created + body; climb to L2 with namespace (briefing/<area>), title, and tags, and to L3 with modified, temporal validity, provenance, citations[] for any sourced claims, and typed relationships[]. Gate every output with mif-validate (--level 1 minimum).

Why machine-readable

The same document still reads as a terse human status update and projects losslessly to JSON-LD and back — one artifact, two readers.

The L1 -> L3 climb

• templates/good-l1.md — L1 floor: id, type, created + body. A complete, valid briefing, but opaque to a machine consumer asking "is this still current?" or "where did this come from?".
• templates/good.md — L3 (highest this genre supports): adds namespace, modified, temporal validity for the coverage period, W3C-PROV provenance, citations[] tied to the "What's New" items, and a typed relationships[] graph (e.g. relates-to the prior period's briefing). Validate with mif-validate --level 3.

Author at the highest level the drafting context supports (grade down rather than fabricate). templates/bad.md shows the antipattern: "What's New" bullets with no paired "Why It Matters" — orphan updates the reader has no way to weigh.