> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.orchestrahq.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Issue briefs

> What an agent or teammate starts an issue knowing, and exactly what is sent when you hand it off

An issue's brief is what the next agent or teammate starts it knowing: the
issue itself, then the constraints, dead ends, conclusions and open questions
that earlier sessions on it left behind. It is plain text, so it works the same
in a cloud run, in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, or in a teammate's hands.

## What is sent, and what is about it

Every brief has two parts, and they are kept apart everywhere you see them.

**What is sent** is the prompt: the issue's title and description, each line
that survived striking, and your note if you wrote one. This is the text an
agent receives, byte for byte.

**What is about it** is for you, deciding whether to send it, and is never
sent:

* which sessions the brief read, and which were left out for only mentioning
  the issue
* why a brief holds nothing beyond the issue, when that is the case
* where each line came from (the session and the day, or a recorded decision)
* which lines were struck, and by whom

On the issue page, handing off opens a dialog with the prompt in an editable
box under **What is sent**, and everything about the brief in a separate panel
under it, marked **About this brief, not sent**.

## From the terminal

`orchestra brief <issue-ref>` prints an issue's brief as the exact text the web
app would send for it, read as you, through your sign-in.

```bash theme={null}
orchestra brief W-7
orchestra brief W-7 | claude -p
orchestra brief W-7 --note "Start with the callback." > brief.txt
```

Only the prompt goes to stdout, with no trailing newline added, so piping it
hands an agent the brief and nothing else. What is about the brief goes to
stderr, where you read it and a pipe never sees it.

| Flag | What it does |
| - | - |
| `--note "..."` | Add your own words at the end, as the note on the issue page does |
| `--quiet`, `-q` | Print the brief alone, with nothing on stderr |

Striking lines happens on the issue page. A line struck there is gone from the
brief everywhere, the terminal included.


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