exec-summary

Produces an executive summary: a short, standalone brief for decision-makers — executives, sponsors, board members — who need the conclusion and the single recommended action, and will not read past page two. Its center of gravity is the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) — the answer and the recommended action stated before any context. An exec summary states conclusions and their business consequence; it does not narrate method, explore alternatives, or expose intermediate analysis.

This genre follows the widely-used BLUF convention, with an additive optional overlay for composing into a fuller ESOMAR-style market-research report or PTES-style pentest report as their leadership-summary section.

Pattern (industry: BLUF executive summary)

1. BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) — one paragraph: the answer and the recommended action, stated before any context. Never open with method or background. The heading must literally contain "BLUF" (e.g. ## BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)) so automated checks can locate it.
2. Key Findings — 3 to 5 bullets, each a single load-bearing fact with its "so what". Cite the source behind each quantified claim.
3. Recommendation — one bold, specific, actionable directive. Include What / Why / How / Risk.
4. Risks & Caveats — the 1 to 3 conditions under which the recommendation fails, plus the confidence basis for any uncertain finding.

Rules that keep it an executive summary

• Length is a hard ceiling: 1-2 pages (standalone mode). If it grows, cut — do not continue.
• The summary must stand alone: a reader who reads only this document can act correctly.
• Quantify at least one finding. Never fabricate a number; present a range when sources disagree and hedge ("estimated", "data suggests") for uncertain claims.
• Use active voice throughout — no "is drawn from", "was found to", "were identified". Write "Three controlled pilots show 40% efficiency gains," not "the 40% reduction is drawn from three controlled pilots."
• Never expose intermediate analysis, methodology narration, or an alternatives-considered discussion — that belongs in the fuller report this summary may introduce.
• Inline numeric citation markers ([1], [2]) resolving to a compact footnote list. No bibliography, no appendices — footnotes only.

Composable mode (additive — off by default; render when requested)

Standalone is the default. When requested, render this genre as the leadership-summary section of a larger standard report — still emit the summary section shaped for embedding, not the whole multi-section report:

• Market-research report (market-research-report genre) — render as the report's management summary that introduces the fuller study. Emit only that section, sized for embedding; do not generate the study's body sections. ESOMAR is an ethics code, not a report format — carry that caveat; do not claim ESOMAR-format conformance.
• Pentest report (security-pentest genre) — render as the PTES Executive / Leadership Summary, expanded with its sub-elements: Posture (overall security posture), Risk Profile (business risk from the findings), and Roadmap (prioritized remediation direction). Emit only that section, not the full technical report.

Standalone behavior is unchanged when composable mode is not requested.

Anti-triggers — do not use this genre for

• The fuller study or report this summary would introduce — that is market-research-report or security-pentest (or prd for product requirements); this genre only produces the leadership-summary section.
• A team-facing technical evaluation with a comparison table — that is engineering.
• A narrative alignment doc read by engineers before building — that is google-design-doc.

MIF frontmatter

type: semantic — an executive summary is declarative decision-and-rationale knowledge, not a time-bound event or a step sequence. Use namespace: exec-summary/<area> and entity.entity_type: executive-summary. Climb to L2 with namespace, modified, title, and tags when the drafting context supplies them. Gate every output with mif-validate at its target level; the floor is --level 1.

Why machine-readable — the point of MIF here

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

The L1 -> L3 climb (two exemplars)

• templates/good-l1.md — L1 floor: id, type, created + body. A complete, valid summary, but opaque to a machine consumer.
• templates/good.md — L3 (highest this genre supports): adds namespace, modified, temporal validity, W3C-PROV provenance, citations[] tied to the Key Findings claims, and a typed relationships[] graph (relates-to the fuller report this summary introduces). 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: a summary that buries the recommendation behind background and method instead of leading with BLUF.