The wizard helps you write a clear brief. It does not — and cannot — write the brief for you. Here is why we built it, what it does well, and where it falls short.
gestuo's AI brief wizard walks you through the seven steps of writing a commission brief: subject, style, colours, use, mood, details, review. At each step, the wizard asks you a question, gives you examples, and shows you a draft of what your answer might look like.
The wizard exists because most first-time buyers don't know what to put in a brief. They've never written one. They don't know the vocabulary (palette? mood? use?). They don't know how much detail to include. They stare at the blank form and write something vague, and the artist comes back with a painting that's not what they wanted.
We considered not having a wizard — just a freeform text box. We tested this. The result was consistently worse briefs and more artist-side frustration. So we built the wizard.
What the wizard does well.
- Catches omissions. The wizard asks about subject, style, colours, use, mood, and details — six things most first-time buyers forget at least two of. By the end, you've covered all of them. - Provides examples. Each step has three or four example answers. You can borrow one, modify one, or ignore them all. The examples are drawn from real commissions that worked well. - Checks length. The wizard will warn you if your brief is too long (over-sharing) or too short (under-sharing). Most first-time briefs are too short — two or three sentences — and the wizard gently pushes for more. - Generates a draft. At the end, the wizard writes a draft brief based on your answers. You can edit it before sending.
What the wizard cannot do.
- It cannot read your mind. If you don't know what you want, the wizard will not invent it. The wizard is good at helping you articulate what you already feel; it is bad at helping you discover what you should feel. - It cannot see. The wizard does not look at your reference images. You have to describe what you want in words. - It does not negotiate with the artist. Once you submit the brief, the artist can accept, decline, or ask follow-up questions. The wizard is not involved in that back-and-forth. - It does not pick the artist. The wizard does not recommend specific artists. The matching happens after you submit the brief.
The honest argument against the wizard.
Some people think AI brief wizards are gimmicks. We agree — most are. The difference here is that the wizard does not try to be clever. It does not generate novel ideas. It asks the same questions a good consultant would ask, and it shows you the answers that have worked before.
If you already know how to write a brief, you don't need the wizard. Skip it. Use the freeform text box. The wizard is for people who don't.
One more thing. The wizard runs on OpenRouter, not on a proprietary gestuo model. The model we use is the best open-weight model for structured text generation as of when we built it. If a better model becomes available, we'll switch. We do not train our own model — we do not have enough commission data to train one responsibly, and we don't want to.
The wizard's job is to make sure you write a clear brief. It does that job well enough to be worth the cost. It does not pretend to do more.
David Handford
gestuo author