Stop making big decisions in your head.
The tool that turns a vague what should I do into a structured brief: the actual decision, your hidden assumptions, three options with second-order consequences, and the strongest argument against the one you are leaning toward.
Most strategic thinking is a founder pacing the kitchen at 11pm trying to decide which option feels less wrong. That is not a strategy. It is anxiety performing strategy.
Decision Brief structures the actual thinking. You describe the decision. It works through it the way a senior advisor would: what is the real decision, what are you assuming that you have not checked, who else is affected and what are their hidden incentives, what do the three options look like 12 months out, and what is the strongest argument against the one you prefer. Then it produces the brief: a written record of the choice and the reasoning.
The difference is not the answer. It is the question.
Same decision, same five minutes. The only variable is structure.
You are considering raising prices 30% across your retainers. You want to know whether it is a good idea.
You get a competent answer. Pros: more revenue, premium positioning, filters price-sensitive accounts. Cons: churn risk, relationship damage, timing. Phase it, grandfather key clients, watch your top accounts.
Sensible. The kind of thing a sharp friend says over coffee. You read it, nod, and you are exactly where you started.
It does not answer. It asks whether you are asking the right question:
- →The real decision is not raise prices. It is decide which clients I am willing to lose
- →The unchecked assumption: you model 80% retention; the honest number is 50 to 60
- →The hidden incentive: the visible reason is revenue; the real one is two years of underpricing yourself
Then the line that does the real work: what would change your mind? If I lose two of my top five, I bail. Now you have a stopping rule, written down, before the emotion of the moment can rewrite it.
The cold version answered a question you hadn't finished asking. This made you ask the better one.
- ✦Founders making non-trivial decisions weekly
- ✦Operators who realise their gut is not always right
- ✦Anyone tired of decision-by-Slack-thread
- →decision-brief.zip: a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →decision-brief-skill.md: plain markdown. Works in ChatGPT Custom GPTs, Gemini, Claude Projects, agent system prompts, anywhere
- →A README inside the zip with install steps for Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and the API
What it does with a real question.
I run a 14-person agency. A larger competitor has offered to acquire us at roughly 1.4x annual revenue, paid over three years with an earn-out. We are profitable, growing 12% a year, and I am tired. My business partner wants to sell. I lean toward staying independent but cannot say why.
Start with what you're actually deciding. It isn't sell versus stay. It's whether you are choosing a company or choosing relief, because you said you're tired, and tired people reliably mistake an exit for a rest. Your partner wants out and you can't articulate why you want in. That inability is the finding: the pull toward staying is probably real but unexamined, and the pull toward selling is loud because exhaustion is loud.
On the numbers, 1.4x revenue paid over three years with an earn-out is not a clean exit. It is a three-year employment contract with part of your price contingent on a larger competitor's decisions about your clients, your people and your margins. Fourteen people lose independence on a promise you don't control. For a profitable agency growing 12%, that structure transfers most of the risk to you while the buyer keeps the upside.
Stress-test the story you tell yourself: if you stay, you must buy out your partner or run beside someone who has already left emotionally. That is the real cost of independence, and it's solvable in ways the tiredness isn't.
My position: don't accept this offer as structured, and don't decide staying is right until you can state the reason in one sentence.
Next move: this week, write down what would have to be true in 12 months for you to say "I'm glad I stayed," with one observable threshold, then ask your partner what it would take for them to stay or be bought out.
The full Tool runs the whole procedure and writes the complete deliverable, not this excerpt.
Written by claude-sonnet-5-5 with this Tool loaded, 2026-10-11. Checked automatically for length and for copied framework text.
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Works as a Claude Skill (.zip) and as a plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
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Before you buy.
How is this different from just asking Claude directly?
Asked cold, Claude answers the question you asked, which is rarely the real one. This refuses to answer until it has found the actual decision underneath, surfaced the assumption you have not checked and the incentive you are hiding from yourself, and made you set a stopping rule before the moment can rewrite it.
Will this work with ChatGPT, Gemini, and other LLMs?
Yes. You get a native Claude Skill (.zip) that auto-invokes in Claude, plus a plain .md you can paste into a ChatGPT Custom GPT, a Gemini system prompt, or any LLM. The procedure travels with the file.
Can I share this with my team?
It's licensed for your own personal and professional use. The output it produces is yours to circulate. To put the Tool itself in the hands of a whole team, email hello@authority.md about team licensing.
What if it doesn't work for me?
If the file hasn't been delivered, or arrives defective or empty, we refund in full: see our refund policy.
Decision Brief is a structured thinking tool. Not financial or legal advice, not a substitute for professional counsel on regulated decisions.