# Brief To Shortlist

> Turn a written client brief you already have (pasted email, deck text, bullets, RFP excerpt) into a client-ready ranked creator shortlist with per-creator rationale, audience-geo fit, freshness status, conflict flags, and a vertical rate band. Use when the user says "build a shortlist for this brief", "find creators for this campaign", "cast this brief", or "who should we use for [brand/campaign]" with a brief in hand. Deliverable is a paste-into-deck markdown shortlist.

- Skill: `creatorland/brief-to-shortlist` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add creatorland/brief-to-shortlist`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/creatorland/brief-to-shortlist/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Marketing & Growth
- Author: creatorland (https://skillmd.com/u/creatorland)
- Updated: 2026-09-21
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/creatorland/brief-to-shortlist

---


# Brief-to-Shortlist

The flagship casting skill. Takes a raw client brief in any written format —
forwarded email, deck text, scattered bullets, an RFP paragraph — and turns it
into a ranked, enriched, client-ready shortlist that a casting director can
paste into a deck without re-checking the data framing. For agency casting
directors and brand-side influencer-marketing managers.

Read first: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/shared/conventions.md (tool schemas, credit
prices, the conventions — conventions 10 budget-is-a-price, 11 brand filters,
12 relax the binding constraint, and 13 auto-chain profile lookups especially
apply to casting). This skill honors thrifty/thorough credit modes
(${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/shared/credit-modes.md), Refusal Recovery
(${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/shared/refusal-recovery.md), and the Freshness Gate
(${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/shared/freshness-gate.md).

Calibration: if `~/.claude/plugins/config/creatorland/creatorland-data/PROFILE.md` exists (written by `/intake`), read it first — persona, familiarity (1–3), and saved defaults set narration level and assumed context (conventions.md §15).

> If the input is a call transcript or meeting recording rather than a written
> brief, this is the wrong skill — use `transcript-to-shortlist`. If the user
> wants a brief *document* produced (not creators found), use `brief-builder`.

> **Precision & filters for outreach (convention 14).** When this list will
> feed an outreach step, default to precision over raw recall: search
> `precision: "tight"` with the hard-gate filters the brief supports
> (`platform`, `niche`, `data_freshness_days`, `content_format`,
> `audience_country`), and reserve `broad` plus heavy `lookalike` unioning for
> market sizing. Do not fan out dozens of `lookalike` calls to hit a volume
> target (each hop drifts from the seed), and trim the weak tail by each
> result row `relative_fit` (within-set fit, `1.0` = strongest) rather than
> padding to a round number. Canon:
> `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/shared/conventions.md` convention 14.

> **Lead with the supply answer when the client asks "is there enough?"**
> Before (or alongside) casting, `count_creators` gives a free, rounded
> headline count of how many creators match the brief's filters — the
> client-facing "pool size" number. `search_creators` returns a capped
> ranked page, so quote the count for supply and the shortlist for the
> curated picks; never relay the shortlist length as the total pool.

## Inputs to collect

- **The brief** (required) — any written format. Do not make the user
  restructure it; normalization is your job.
- **Shortlist size** — default **8** if unstated. Don't ask if the brief or
  context implies a size ("top 10", "a handful").
- **Markets / geo priorities** — pull from the brief if present; ask only if
  absent AND geo plausibly matters to the campaign.
- **Competitor brands to conflict-check** (optional) — ask once: "Any
  competitor brands I should conflict-check the slate against?" Skip if the
  user already named them or said no conflicts matter.
- **Credit mode** — default `thorough`; switch to `thrifty` on the trigger
  phrases in the credit-modes module.

Never ask twice for anything the brief already states — quote it back instead.

## Flow

**Step 0 — Normalize the brief (no tool call, 0 credits).** Read the raw brief
and produce a structured campaign description: target audience, corpus
vertical (Beauty, Fashion, Health & Fitness, Food & Beverage, Technology, …),
content style / vibe words, platform(s), geo markets, follower tier, explicit
exclusions. Show it in one compact block; proceed unless the user corrects it.
Keep the brief's own language — it powers the per-creator rationale later.

Two extraction rules to get right here (conventions 10–11):

- **Budget is a price, not an audience size.** If the brief gives money per
  deliverable or a campaign total ("$3–5K/video", "we have $20K"), record it
  as the **rate band to check** — never as a follower filter. Set follower
  filters ONLY from an explicit audience-size ask ("50–200K followers") or a
  named tier. Budget and tier are different axes; a budget alone never sets
  `min_followers`/`max_followers`.
- **Named brands → a comp set.** If the brief names brands to match on
  ("creators who've worked with similar beauty brands — I'm at Fenty"), build
  a comp set from the named brand and its peers (Fenty → Rare Beauty, Pat
  McGrath, Glossier, Charlotte Tilbury, …) and carry it into the search as a
  `brand_affinities` filter (step 1). Show the comp set in the normalized
  block so the user can correct it.

> Alternative spine: the server ships a maintained prompt,
> `shortlist-from-brief`, that encodes this same flow server-side. Prefer it
> when the harness surfaces server prompts cleanly; otherwise run the steps
> below directly. Either way the deliverable template and honesty rules in
> this file still apply.

**Step 1 — Search.** One call, limit = 2–3× shortlist size (thorough: 3×;
thrifty: 2×). For the default shortlist of 8, thorough:

```json
search_creators {
  "mode": "brief",
  "brief": "<normalized brief text, ≤2000 chars, keeping the client's vibe words>",
  "filters": {
    "platform": "<if the brief names one: instagram|tiktok|youtube|twitter|twitch>",
    "country": "<primary market if stated>",
    "min_followers": <tier floor — ONLY from an explicit audience-size ask or named tier; NEVER inferred from a budget>,
    "max_followers": <tier ceiling — same rule; a "$3–5K/video" budget is a rate, not a size>,
    "niche": "<if cleanly stated>",
    "brand_affinities": ["<comp-set brands from step 0 when the brief names brands to match on>"],
    "min_engagement_rate": <0–1, only if the brief sets a bar>,
    "audience_country": "<ISO country ONLY when the ask is audience-in-market — e.g. 'reach US audiences' — distinct from where the creator lives>",
    "min_audience_country_share": <0–1, pair with audience_country when a minimum in-market share matters>,
    "data_freshness_days": <e.g. 90, ONLY when recency matters — 'creators active recently'>,
    "content_format": "<personality_led | faceless_clip — ONLY when the brief implies on-camera personality vs faceless/clip content>"
  },
  "limit": 24,
  "precision": "balanced"
}
```

Include only filters the brief actually supports — `brief` text alone is valid;
if you pass `filters` it needs at least one signal. Use `precision: "tight"`
when the brief is highly specific, `"broad"` when it's a vibe sketch.

When the brief names brands to match on, pass the step-0 comp set as
`brand_affinities` (and confirm via profile **brand affiliations** in step 4) —
more reliable than hoping `brief` text surfaces brand-adjacent creators
semantically (convention 11). Never translate the campaign budget into
`min_followers`/`max_followers` (convention 10) — the budget is handled by the
rate call in step 5, not the search filters.

The GA hard-gated filters (conventions §`search_creators`) are advisory, not
mandatory — reach for them only when the brief calls for it: `audience_country`
(+ `min_audience_country_share`) when the ask is audience-*in-market* (distinct
from where the creator is based), `data_freshness_days` when recency matters, and
`content_format` when the brief implies personality-led vs faceless/clip content.
Each is a hard gate (filters the pool, no rank score), so don't over-constrain —
if a gate empties the pool, relax it per convention 12 and say so.

**If results come back thin, relax per convention 12** — broaden the binding
constraint, not a satisfied one: if the user said "California", widen geo at
the same level (California → West Coast / US) and offer audience-geo as an
alternative axis; never suggest sub-regions already inside the stated region,
and never propose switching off the requested platform. Say which constraint
you relaxed and why.

**Step 2 — Profile fan-out.** `get_creator_profile` per candidate:

```json
get_creator_profile { "identifier": { "type": "creatorland_user_id", "creatorland_user_id": "<id from search result>" } }
```

(Use whichever identifier type the search result returns — `social_handle`,
`creatorland_user_id`, or `source_user` — exactly one type per call.)
Thorough: profile every candidate from step 1. Thrifty: rank candidates on
search-result signal first, profile only the top `shortlist size + 2`.

On paid plans (pro/pilot/internal) both the search rows and each profile carry a
paid-gated **`avatar { url, source }`**; free/demo plans get `avatar: null`. Keep
the URL against each creator so the shortlist card can show a headshot — degrade
gracefully to initials when it's `null`.

**Credit estimate fires here.** Thorough at default size is 2 + 24 + 5 ≈ 31
credits — over the ~30 threshold, so state the estimate before fanning out and
offer thrifty (do not block; proceed after stating it).

**Step 3 — Freshness Gate.** Classify every profiled creator fresh / aging /
stale per the freshness-gate module. Stale creators go only in the "re-verify
before pitch" section (thrifty: may drop them, saying how many were dropped).

**Step 4 — Conflict check.** If the user supplied competitor brands, compare
each profile's **brand affiliations** (pro-plan field) against that list.
Overlap → a conflict flag on the row, naming the brand and that it came from
the profile's affiliations. If affiliations are absent (free plan), say
conflict checking was unavailable and why — never silently skip it.

**Step 5 — One rate call for the slate.** Exactly one
`query_market_intelligence` for the whole slate's vertical — shared band
context, not per-creator pricing:

```json
query_market_intelligence {
  "mode": "rate",
  "vertical": "<the slate's inferred vertical>",
  "deal_type": "<only if the brief specifies one>",
  "creator_tier": "<the slate's target tier — if the brief names one or the finalists cluster at one>"
}
```

Wrapped in Refusal Recovery: if refused (rate floor: 10 brands / 50 deals),
walk the ladder (thorough: until clearance; thrifty: max 2 rungs) and disclose
the clearance level in the deliverable. Each rung is a fresh 5-credit call.

When the brief names a creator tier (or the finalists cluster at one), pass
`creator_tier` (emerging <1k / nano 1k-10k / micro 10k-100k / mid 100k-500k / macro 500k-1M / mega 1M+) so the band is
scoped to same-size creators; when tier is mixed or unknown keep the
vertical-wide band as the fallback and say so — a tier too thin for the
distinct-creator privacy floor auto-broadens (disclosed) to the all-tier band.

If the brief stated a budget, this rate band is how that budget is honored
(convention 10): surface the band up front and flag which finalists sit inside
the stated budget — appropriately priced ✓, above band ↑, below band ↓ — as a
rate-fit note on each row. Never disqualify a creator for being "too small"
for the budget; the budget is spend, not an audience filter.

**Step 6 — Rank and write the deliverable.** Rank on brief-fit (audience,
vibe, geo, tier), penalizing aging freshness and conflicts. Tie rationale to
the brief's own language.

## Deliverable

Client-ready markdown (paste-into-deck quality):

```markdown
# Creator Shortlist — <campaign/brand name>
_Built from your brief, <date> · <N> creators · Creatorland Data_

## The brief, as I read it
<the normalized block from step 0, 3–5 lines>

## Shortlist (ranked)

### 1. <Name> — @<handle> (<platform>, <follower count>)
<!-- when avatar.url is present (paid plans), render the headshot on the card; fall back to initials when null/free -->
- **Why for this brief:** <2–3 sentences quoting the brief's language — "you asked for 'lo-fi kitchen energy'; her last-90-day grid is exactly that">
- **Audience-geo fit:** <top geos vs. the brief's markets, e.g. "62% US / 14% UK — matches your US-first ask">
- **Rate fit:** ✓ in your $<budget> band | ↑ likely above band | ↓ likely below band — vs. the slate rate band below (only when the brief gave a budget)
- **Brand fit:** <when the brief named brands to match on: "affiliations include <comp-set brand>" or "no comp-set affiliation found in corpus">
- **Freshness:** fresh | aging (note) — stale creators never appear here
- **Conflicts:** none found | ⚠ affiliated with <brand> (per profile brand affiliations) — review before pitch
<repeat per creator>

## Indicative rate context (slate-level)
Market band for the **<vertical>** vertical<, broadened per note below>:
p25 $<x> · median $<y> · p75 $<z> — <deal volume / recency from the tool>.
> <provenance line exactly as the tool returned it>
This is the **market band for the vertical/tier — not any individual
creator's rate.** Use it to frame budget conversations, not to quote talent.
<If broadened: "Benchmark basis: <level> — the narrower slice was below the
privacy floor (10 brands / 50 deals), so scope was widened; a privacy feature
of the data source, not missing data.">

## Re-verify before pitch
<stale creators with what's stale; or "None — all candidates cleared the freshness gate."
Thrifty + drops: "K stale candidates were dropped in thrifty mode.">

## Caveats
- Rate band is vertical-level; no per-creator rate data exists in this corpus.
- Conflict checks cover Creatorland-known brand affiliations only — not
  unreported or in-flight deals.
- <conflict checking unavailable on free plan, if applicable>
- <any filters the corpus couldn't honor — report gaps, don't paper over them>
- No creator contact info is included or available via this tool; route
  outreach through Creatorland connections or the creator's public profiles.

---
Data freshness: <N>/<M> creators synced within the last sync window; <K> flagged for re-verification.
Provenance: Creatorland Data MCP · search + <M> profiles + 1 rate benchmark (<clearance level>) · <date>.
Credits used this run: ~<N> (1 search ×2 + <M> profiles ×1 + <R> market-intel ×5).
```

## Honesty rules

- The rate band is **vertical-level, never "this creator's rate."** Write
  "market band for this vertical/tier" — no per-creator pricing exists.
- Disclose Refusal Recovery broadening at the clearance level, always.
- Never strip the provenance line to make the deck prettier.
- Rationale must trace to brief language or profile data — no invented
  audience claims, no engagement numbers the tools didn't return.
- Stale data is never silently mixed into the main list.
- A stated budget is spend, not an audience size — never disqualify a creator
  for being "too small/large" for it, and never set follower filters from it
  (convention 10). Rate fit is framed against the slate's vertical band, never
  as that creator's actual rate.
- When you relax a thin search, never suggest a sub-region already inside the
  user's stated region, and never propose abandoning the requested platform
  (convention 12); name the constraint you relaxed.
- Never imply access to creator contact info (PII discipline, convention 7).

## Credit footprint

thorough: ~31 credits (1 search ×2 + ~24 profiles + 1 rate call ×5; +5 per
refusal-ladder rung) · thrifty: ~17 credits (1 search ×2 + ~10 profiles + 1
rate call ×5, max 2 ladder rungs)