If you hand work to an AI agent (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, custom agents), most failures trace back to the brief, not the model. Here are 10 anti-patterns I keep seeing, each with a one-line fix. Copy freely. Smell these in your briefs. Each wastes tokens, time, or trust.
“Make it better.” / “Clean this up.” / “Explore options.”
Fix: Name the artifact and the acceptance test.
Tools say “repo write: Y” with no path limits.
Fix: Allowlist directories; forbid .env, secrets, infra by default.
“Research the market” with no table, memo, or decision.
Fix: Definition of Done = files a human will open in a meeting.
“Be exhaustive” + “max 10 minutes” + “cite everything.”
Fix: Rank constraints; mark Hard vs Soft.
API keys in the brief “for convenience.”
Fix: Point to a secret manager / env name; never paste values.
“Whatever you need to get it done.”
Fix: Escalation table; stop conditions.
No human owner → agent invents product policy.
Fix: Owner field required; acceptance is a human step.
“Write in our voice” with no voice doc or samples.
Fix: Link 2 good examples or a 10-line voice sheet.
“Confidence must be 95%.”
Fix: Ask for source grades and assumption tags instead.
Out of scope empty → agent expands forever.
Fix: At least two explicit non-goals.
This is a free excerpt from a small set of briefing templates I sell. If you want the full fill-in-the-blank packs (briefing, eval, digest, research, incident), they're at https://briefstack.surge.sh/ — the list above is useful on its own either way.