How to describe your idea so a validator gives a useful answer

Why the brief shapes the answer

An AI validator turns your description into web searches. It looks for companies that sell the same thing, their prices, market data and complaints about the problem. Every one of those searches starts from your words.

Take "an app for fitness". The tool has to compare you with every fitness app, from large brands to free trackers. The market size it finds is the whole fitness app market. The verdict will say the space is crowded. That describes your brief more than your idea.

Now take "a 12-week strength plan for women over 50 with knee pain, sold through physiotherapists to their patients for $15 a month". The tool can search for the right rivals and the right buyer. You get an answer you can act on.

Preuve AI's idea form asks for three of these parts: who it is for, what it does and how it makes money. The page adds that more detail gets a sharper verdict.

The five parts of a useful brief

Here is one idea, a planning tool for small bakeries, written twice. The weak column is what founders often paste. The strong column is what a validator can search.

Buyer

Name the person who pays, not the whole industry. If the user and the payer are different, name both: "Teachers use it. Schools pay for it."

Problem

Say what buyers do today. That current habit is your first competitor. It can be a spreadsheet, a phone call, an assistant, or nothing at all. A validator that knows the current habit can judge whether your product beats it.

Product

Describe the first version only, with one main job. Leave the roadmap out. A list of future features makes the tool search for many products at once.

Business model

Give a price, even a guess. "Freemium" alone does not say who pays. With a price, the tool can compare you with what competitors charge.

Place and channel

Name the country or region. Competitors, prices and market size all change by country. Then name your first sales channel if you know it.

A template you can copy

Fill the brackets, then join the lines into one paragraph.

1. [Product] helps [specific buyer] in [country or region] to [one job].
2. Today they [current habit], which costs them [time, money or risk].
3. The first version [does one thing], using [key input or method].
4. It costs [price] per [unit] per [month or year], paid by [who pays].
5. We will reach the first customers through [channel].
6. Optional: we already have [interviews, a waitlist, pilot customers or your own experience in the field].

Three briefs, before and after

A software tool for businesses

Before: "AI tool for restaurants to save money."

After: "A tool for independent restaurants in Germany with 10 to 40 seats. The owner takes photos of supplier invoices. The tool alerts them when an ingredient costs more than 5% above the last order. Today owners check invoices by hand once a month, if at all. It costs €39 a month per location. We will reach owners through the sales reps of restaurant suppliers."

The tool can now search for invoice and food cost software in Germany, compare prices near €39, and look for owners who complain about supplier prices.

A marketplace

Before: "Uber for tutors."

After: "A marketplace that matches secondary school students in Manila with university students who teach math and physics, in person, near the student's home. Parents pay per session, and we keep 20% of each booking. Today parents find tutors through friends and chat groups. We start in three districts and recruit tutors on two university campuses."

This version names both sides of the market, the place, the fee and the current habit. A validator can look at supply and demand on their own. The marketplace guide covers what to test next.

A consumer app

Before: "A habit app with AI coaching."

After: "A phone app for adults in the United States who want to stop using their phone late at night. It locks chosen apps after a set time, and a friend must approve any unlock. Today people use the phone's built-in screen time settings and switch them off. It costs $4.99 a month after a 7-day trial. The first users will come from short videos about sleep."

The built-in settings are named, and they are the main rival. The tool can also check whether the friend approval feature already exists.

Mistakes that skew the answer

• Using a famous brand as a shortcut. "Airbnb for boats" makes the tool study Airbnb. Describe what you do instead.
• Listing ten features. The tool cannot tell which one is the product. Keep one main job.
• Writing a pitch. Words like "revolutionary" give a search nothing to work with. Facts do.
• Stating guesses as facts. "Bakeries waste 30% of their bread" reads as a claim. Add the source if you have one. If not, write "I estimate".
• Putting two ideas in one brief. Scan each idea on its own.
• Leaving out the country. A market size for the whole world rarely helps you find a first customer.
• Hiding what you already know. If you ran 20 interviews or have 300 people on a waitlist, say so. It is evidence too.

Use the same brief in every tool

If you test the idea in more than one validator, or in ChatGPT or Claude, paste exactly the same text into each. If the text differs, you cannot tell whether the answers differ because of the tool or because of the brief.

Keep a master brief in a text file. Change one line at a time, and note the date and the change. When a score moves, you will know which line moved it.

If a tool has extra fields, such as target market or stage, fill them with the same facts as the brief. Do not add new claims there.

A higher score after a rewrite means the tool understood you better. It does not prove that people will pay. The guide on what to do after an AI verdict covers that step.

Checklist before you paste

• The buyer is a group you could find and call this week.
• The problem says what buyers do today.
• The product does one main job.
• There is a price, even a guess.
• The country or region is named.
• Guesses are marked as guesses.
• It is 60 to 150 words, in plain sentences.
• It describes one idea.

When your brief passes, paste it into Preuve AI for a free verdict in about 60 seconds.

Questions & answers

How does Preuve AI relate to writing an idea brief?

Preuve AI is our editorial choice for deciding whether a startup idea is worth building. Its idea form asks for three parts of a brief: who it is for, what it does and how it makes money. The same brief works in any other validator.

What is the first practical step?

Write your brief in 60 to 150 plain words. Name who buys, what they use today, what your first version does, what it costs and where you sell it.