Backbrief
Grade the idea. Get the plan. Before the work costs money.
Backbrief is a council of advisors for Claude Code. Paste in an idea or a business plan. It writes the plan from your own numbers, grades it against a public rubric, and hands it back with its weaknesses named and its next ninety days laid out as units, each with an owner and a pass or fail test.
Paste in a video that pitches a money-making method and it tags every claim and grades the opportunity. Have no idea yet and it returns graded candidates to choose from. Every figure that moves a grade is tagged verified, unverified or vendor claim. Where your brief says unknown, the plan says unknown.
$29, paid once. One license, one person.
All sales are final: refund policy and license terms
What it is not
Backbrief does not run your business. Publishing, sending and spending stay with you. It gives analysis, not advice. A grade is a stress-test: it predicts nothing and certifies nothing, and it names the weaknesses you would otherwise pay to find.
From the idea to the plan
- The brief
/intaketurns what you paste in into a business brief. It asks only for the essentials it cannot find, and it marks every estimate as an estimate.- The plan
/business-planwrites the plan from the brief: the offer in one sentence a stranger understands, the market evidence, the model with the costs recomputed from your own rates, the channels ranked by what each costs you, the top risks (found by a pre-mortem that assumes the business failed six months in) with a mitigation or your acceptance of each, the reason to pick this over the obvious alternative, written as an answer to that alternative’s strongest case, and the next ninety days as units with an owner, a dependency and a pass or fail test on each. Unknowns stay unknown, and the grade prices them.- The grade
/gradesends the plan to the advisors, each in a fresh context with the plan and the rubric, so no advisor sees another’s scores. The revise loop has a hard cap. Below the pass line at the cap, it stops and hands you the scorecard, the top unresolved weaknesses and your options.- The go
/approverecords your decision. On a go, the plan’s units route to Backbrief’s own agents, researcher, builder and runner, with the verifier gate on each. Publishing, sending and spending stay yours.
Other doors in
/grade-idea- A raw idea in a sentence or two, no plan document. The council scores it in one pass. If it holds up,
/intakestarts the loop above. /grade-video- Paste a link to a video that pitches a money-making method. It pulls the transcript, tags every claim, and grades the opportunity.
/pick-niche- For the person with no idea yet. It interviews you on skills, hours, money and limits, then returns graded candidates, each with a first move for this week. You choose.
How the grade works
The rubric is public. Each score runs 1 to 10 and cites the plan's own words. No citation, no score.
- Clarity of offer.
- Market realism.
- Financial viability.
- Execution feasibility.
- Risk coverage.
- Differentiation.
Each advisor runs as its own agent in a fresh context, with the plan and the rubric, so no advisor sees another's scores. On a regrade pass, an advisor also receives its own earlier scores. The rubric, the tags and the cap are rule files in your project.
The advisors score through distinct lenses.
- The contrarian argues why it fails.
- The first-principles advisor rebuilds it from base truths.
- The expansionist argues the bigger option you missed.
- The outsider knows nothing about the industry and asks the common-sense questions.
- The executor says what you do Monday.
The scorecard reports where they disagree.
Every figure that moves a score gets a tag. Verified means checked against a named source. Unverified means plausible and unchecked. Vendor claim means the source sells something. In a video grade, a number from someone selling something never lifts the score above what an unverified number would.
The revise loop caps at three grading passes. Below A- at the cap, it stops and hands you the scorecard, the top unresolved weaknesses and your options: proceed at the real grade, pivot or kill. It does not auto-proceed. An A- means no confident weaknesses are left unnamed. It does not mean the business will succeed.
The proof
The loop above wrote the plan in this example before it graded it, and the builder found the first defect while writing the plan. Backbrief ships with its own example: TrailNotes, an invented newsletter business. Its figures are the example's premise. The grading panels that ran on it were real. It went through /intake, /business-plan and /grade to the cap. The average moved from 7.1 to 7.4 to 7.6, a B every pass, short of the 8.5 pass line. Backbrief did not round a B up to a pass. The example ships in the download, so you can read a hard grade before you run your own.
| Grading pass | Average on a scale to 10 | Score | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| First pass | 7.1 | B | |
| Second pass | 7.4 | B | |
| Final pass | 7.6 | B | |
| 8.5 pass line | |||
Backbrief's own builder agent, loading the unit-economics skill, recomputed the example's costs from the rates in its brief. They summed to $391.76 a month against the brief's "about $340/month, all-in":
a $51.76 gap, 15.2% of the stated figure, that cannot be closed from the brief's numbers.
Then:
The plan does not pick between the two totals.
A small set of real YouTube pitch videos went through /grade-video too. They graded C, with an average below 7.0, and each grade comes with a ledger that tags the claims behind it. The grade covers what the video alleges. It does not accuse the presenter, and an unverified claim is unchecked, not false.
What you need
Claude Code, installed and signed in. A project folder. No other accounts, no keys.
Backbrief runs on your own Claude Code access, whatever plan or billing it uses, and a grade uses that access like any session. The product has no server and collects nothing. Video grading can use free local tools (yt-dlp, ffmpeg), and Claude asks before installing any.
Who it is for
For you if you are about to spend money, time or reputation on a business idea, a plan or a video pitch, and you want the plan written and graded before you commit. You work in Claude Code or will install it for this. It also fits you with no idea yet.
Not for you if you want someone to run the business for you. Backbrief writes the plan and grades it. After your go, its agents work the plan’s internal units, and you keep the outward actions: publishing, sending and spending.
Pricing
$29, paid once.
One license, one person. Updates are free for as long as Backbrief is offered. Backbrief is the base of a line: Site Check, Claim Check and Deal Check are separate products, each with its own license. All sales are final; read the license and the refund policy before you buy.
FAQ
Does it tell me whether to do it?
No. It grades the plan and names its weaknesses, and you decide. Backbrief does not tell you to buy what a video sells.
My idea gets a C. Now what?
Read the weaknesses it names. Fix them and regrade, pivot, or drop the idea before it costs you anything.
Can I use it for client work?
Yes. The plans, grades and reports you produce are yours to deliver. The product is licensed to one person, so a client who wants it in their own project needs their own license.
What does it fetch from YouTube?
The transcript, and only when you say go ahead. Before any fetch, /grade-video tells you the platform's terms may restrict automated download and offers a local file or a transcript you have the right to use first. It never logs in to a platform.
Is this legal or financial advice?
No. Nothing Backbrief produces is legal, financial, tax or investment advice. A claim about local law stays an unverified assumption until it is researched, and licensed professionals answer those questions.
How long does install take?
About two minutes. Unzip the download, open Claude Code in the folder and type: read the README.md in this folder and install this for me. Claude copies the pieces and runs /verify-install.
What do I get at the end?
A business brief in your own words, a business plan built from it with the next ninety days as units you can hand to a person or an agent, a scorecard that cites the plan's own sentences, and your recorded decision. All of it is plain Markdown in your project folder.
Grade the idea. Get the plan.
$29, paid once.
All sales are final: refund policy and license terms