The Creative Brief

I was explaining front matter to a developer last week when he interrupted me mid-sentence: "So it's like... metadata?"

"Yes," I said. "But that makes it sound boring."

"Isn't it boring?"

And that's when I realized: we're thinking about this all wrong.

Front matter isn't boring. It's not "just metadata." It's the creative brief that turns your random text file into a campaign-ready AI skill. It's the difference between Don Draper walking into a pitch meeting with a strategy versus some guy showing up with a PowerPoint and hoping for the best.

If you've never watched Mad Men, here's the one-sentence summary: advertising genius navigates 1960s Manhattan selling cigarettes, nostalgia, and the American dream while drinking heavily and looking incredible in a suit.

But the show's real genius? It shows you what happens behind the campaigns. The creative briefs. The research. The structured processes that turn "sell this product" into "It's Toasted" or "The Carousel."

Your AI skill needs the same thing. And front matter is your creative brief.

The Pitch That Almost Wasn't

Let me take you to Season 1, Episode 13: "The Wheel."

Don Draper is pitching the Kodak Carousel—a slide projector that advances slides in a circle instead of a straight line. Revolutionary? Not really. It's a gadget. A mechanical convenience.

The clients expect a pitch about technology. Features. Benefits. "It's faster! It holds more slides! It's... circular!"

Don doesn't do that.

Instead, he dims the lights, clicks the projector, and begins:

The slides advance. Family photos. Childhood. Weddings. Lost moments captured in time.

He clicks again. His own family appears on screen. Then he delivers the line:

The clients don't speak. One wipes his eyes. The pitch is over.

Don Draper just sold nostalgia wrapped in a slide projector.

But here's what the episode doesn't show you: the creative brief that made that pitch possible.

The Brief Nobody Sees

Before Don walked into that meeting, someone wrote a document. It wasn't poetic. It wasn't emotional. It was structured, boring metadata:

That brief is front matter. It's YAML. It's the structured metadata that tells the system: "Here's what we're working with. Here's the context. Here's what matters."

The pitch is the content—the beautiful, emotional execution.

But without the brief, the pitch doesn't exist.

And without front matter, your AI skill is just a text file that nobody knows how to use.

What Front Matter Actually Is (The Boring Part)

Alright, let's get technical for a second. Then we'll get back to Don Draper.

Front matter is structured metadata at the beginning of a file that tells a system how to interpret and use the content that follows.

It usually looks like this (in YAML):

---
name: api-documenter
description: Creates OpenAPI documentation for REST APIs
tags: [documentation, api, openapi]
version: 1.0.0
author: Nolan
tools: [Read, Edit, Write, Bash]
type: skill
---

Everything after the --- is your actual skill—the prompts, the logic, the instructions.

But those 7 lines at the top? That's the creative brief.

It tells the AI system:

• • What this is (type: skill)
• • What it does (description: Creates OpenAPI documentation)
• • What it needs (tools: [Read, Edit, Write, Bash])
• • How to categorize it (tags: [documentation, api, openapi])
• • What version we're on (version: 1.0.0)

Without it, the system sees a blob of text and has to guess. With it, the system knows exactly what campaign it's running.

Lucky Strike: When Front Matter Saves the Campaign

Season 1, Episode 1: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."

Lucky Strike cigarettes is Sterling Cooper's biggest client. But there's a problem: the Federal Trade Commission just banned health claims in tobacco advertising. Every cigarette brand used to claim they were "healthier" or "safer." Now? Nobody can say that.

Panic. The client is furious. The agency is scrambling.

Don Draper walks into the meeting late, listens for 30 seconds, and delivers this:

Silence.

The client loves it. Campaign saved. But here's the thing: every tobacco company toasts their tobacco. It's not special. It's just part of the process.

But Lucky Strike never said it before. So now it's their message. Their identity.

That's front matter. It didn't write the tagline. But it set the constraints, the context, and the goal—so when Don came up with "It's Toasted," everyone knew it was the right answer.

The Front Matter → Creative Brief Translation

Let's map this out directly:

See the pattern?

The creative brief structures human creativity. Front matter structures AI execution.

What Happens Without the Brief: Peggy's Rejected Campaigns

Peggy Olson pitches ideas all the time. Some land. Most bomb.

Why? She misreads the brief.

In Season 2, she pitches a Popsicle campaign that's fun, playful, and aimed at kids. The client wants sophistication—they're trying to appeal to mothers who buy Popsicles for their kids, not the kids themselves.

Wrong audience. Wrong tone. Rejected.

That's what happens when your AI skill doesn't have front matter.

The system tries to use it for the wrong task. The wrong context. The wrong audience. It's not that the skill is bad—it's that nobody told the system when and how to use it.

The Disaster Scenario: Pitching Heineken to the Martini Client

Imagine this:

Peggy walks into a pitch meeting. She's prepared a brilliant campaign for Heineken beer—bold, rebellious, European sophistication.

She presents it to the Martini & Rossi vermouth client.

Disaster. Wrong brand. Wrong product. Wrong everything.

Why did this happen? Nobody wrote a brief clarifying which client was in the meeting.

Now imagine the AI equivalent:

The skill wasn't bad. The system just didn't know what it was for.

Real-World Example: Claude Skills with Front Matter

Let's make this concrete. You're building tools for Claude Code. Here's the difference front matter makes:

---
name: github-issue-creator
description: Creates GitHub issues from bug reports
type: skill
tags: [github, automation, bug-tracking]
tools: [Bash, Read, Write]
version: 1.2.0
author: Nolan
requires: [gh-cli]
---

## Instructions

When the user provides a bug report:
1. Extract key information
2. Format according to template
3. Use `gh issue create`
4. Return issue URL

# GitHub Issue Creator

This creates GitHub issues from bug reports.

When you give me a bug report, I'll format it
and create an issue.

Uses the gh command line tool.

Same content. Completely different execution.

"If You Don't Like What's Being Said, Change the Conversation"

One of Don's most famous lines from the show:

He's talking about PR crises. Reframing. Controlling the narrative.

But it applies to AI skills too:

If you don't like how your AI is performing, write better front matter.

Your skill isn't "broken." The system just doesn't have the context it needs. You're asking it to pitch Kodak without telling it the product is about nostalgia.

Front matter changes the conversation. It tells the system:

• • This is a documentation skill, not a creative writing tool
• • This needs file access, not just text generation
• • This is version 2.0—there are breaking changes from 1.0
• • This requires Node.js and Git to function

Stop expecting the AI to guess. Write the brief.

The Carousel Moment: When Everything Clicks

Back to "The Wheel."

That Kodak pitch works because:

1. The brief identified the emotion (nostalgia, family, memory)
2. Don crafted the narrative (time machine, childhood, back home again)
3. The clients felt the magic (tears, signed contract, campaign approved)

Your AI skill works the same way:

1. Front matter identifies the context (name, tools, type, version, dependencies)
2. Your skill content crafts the logic (prompts, instructions, workflows, examples)
3. The AI executes the magic (creates documentation, automates tasks, solves problems)

Without the brief, Don's just a guy showing family photos. Without front matter, your skill is just text in a file.

The Questions You Should Ask (The Brief Checklist)

Before Don pitches, someone asks:

• • Who is the client?
• • What's the product?
• • What emotion are we selling?
• • What's the deliverable?
• • What's the key message?

Before you ship an AI skill, ask:

Answer these questions in YAML. That's your creative brief.

"Technology Is a Glittering Lure"

Don says this in the Carousel pitch:

He's talking about not getting distracted by features. Not selling the mechanics. Selling the meaning.

The same applies to front matter.

Front matter isn't flashy. It's not the cool part of your AI skill. It's metadata. It's structured data. It's YAML in a file.

But it's what makes everything else work.

The Carousel isn't about a circular slide mechanism. It's about nostalgia.

Your skill isn't about the prompts. It's about solving a problem.

And front matter is what tells the system which problem you're solving.

Don Draper Doesn't Pitch Without a Brief. Your AI Shouldn't Run Without Front Matter.

Here's the bottom line:

Every successful campaign at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce started with a creative brief. Structured. Boring. Essential.

Every successful AI skill should start with front matter. Structured. Boring. Essential.

You can write the most brilliant skill in the world—elegant prompts, perfect logic, flawless execution.

But if the system doesn't know what it is, when to use it, or what it needs to run, it's just a text file gathering dust.

Write the brief. Structure the metadata. Give your AI the context it needs.

Because Don Draper didn't walk into meetings and wing it.

And your AI shouldn't either.

The Pitch (Call to Action)

Think about the best campaigns in Mad Men:

• • "It's Toasted" (Lucky Strike)
• • "The Carousel" (Kodak)
• • "Pass the Heinz" (Heinz Ketchup—the ad so good it sold itself)

Every one started with a brief. Every one had structure. Every one knew its audience, tone, and deliverable.

Your AI skills deserve the same.

Next time you create a skill, an MCP server, a configuration file—anything that an AI system will read and execute—ask yourself:

"If Don Draper were pitching this, what would the creative brief say?"

Then write that brief at the top of the file.

In YAML.

Between two --- markers.

That's front matter. That's your competitive advantage.

Because the magic isn't in the pitch. The magic is in the structure that makes the pitch possible.