How detailed should an AI task brief be?

Make an AI task brief detailed enough to identify the goal, audience, governing sources, boundaries, requested output, and how the result will be reviewed. A small task may need only a few lines if those decisions are already in documents AI can access; a new or consequential task may need more. Do not paste entire files just to make the brief longer or guess at decisions that remain open. Name the documents AI should use and the questions a person still needs to answer.

There is no useful word-count target for an AI task brief. The test is whether someone unfamiliar with the current chat could find the goal, the approved sources, the limits, the requested deliverable, and the check for completion. If those decisions live in accessible process and project documents, the brief can point to them instead of copying them.

Add detail when a wrong assumption would change the result or cost time to undo. Mark unknown facts and pending approvals as open questions. Once the brief is clear, a task message can be short because it names the job and points AI to the direction it needs.