Why Your Client's Brief Is Only Two Lines Long (And What to Send Back)
You have an email open right now. It says something like this: "Need a website. Something modern. Budget is flexible." That is the whole brief. No pages, no timeline, no must-haves. Just two lines and a vague sense that you should already know what they want. This is not a client being lazy. It is a client checking price fit before they commit to writing anything longer. Once you see it this way, the reply gets easier. Our guide on how to scope a software project covers the full process. This p
You have an email open right now. It says something like this: "Need a website. Something modern. Budget is flexible." That is the whole brief. No pages, no timeline, no must-haves. Just two lines and a vague sense that you should already know what they want.
This is not a client being lazy. It is a client checking price fit before they commit to writing anything longer. Once you see it this way, the reply gets easier. Our guide on how to scope a software project covers the full process. This post covers the one email that starts it.
Why the brief is short
A client who has never bought a website or an app does not know what detail to include. So they write the version that costs them the least effort: a headline and a hope.
A client who has bought one before knows exactly what detail matters. If they leave it out anyway, they are testing something else. They want a price range before they invest an hour writing a spec for an agency that turns out to cost three times their budget.
Either way, the short brief is a signal, not a shortcoming. Your job is to read the signal and respond in a way that moves the deal forward without giving away a full estimate for free.
Here are three replies that do that. Steal any of them.
Template 1: Qualify and price range
This reply asks three questions that reveal the budget without asking about the budget directly.
Thanks for reaching out. To point you toward the right scope and rough price range, three quick questions:What is the main action you want a visitor or user to complete on this site or app?Do you have an existing site, brand, or system this needs to connect to or replace?Is there a date this needs to launch by, tied to an event, a funding round, or a season?
Once I have those, I can send a price range within a day.
These three questions work because each one forces a client to reveal scope indirectly. Question 1 tells you if this is a five-page brochure site or a login-gated app. Question 2 tells you if there is legacy integration work hiding under "modern." Question 3 tells you if rush pricing applies.
If you want the longer version of this list, our post on the questions that expose a hidden scope walks through all of them, not just the first three.
Template 2: Discovery call with a calendar link
Some clients will not answer three questions in an email. They want to talk. Give them the option, but make the ask specific enough that it gets accepted instead of ignored.
A 20-minute call usually gets us further than a few emails back and forth. I want to understand what "modern" means to you and what success looks like six months after launch. Here is my calendar: [link]. Pick whatever works this week.
The specific detail matters. "Let's hop on a call" gets ignored. "20-minute call, here is what we will cover, here is my calendar" gets booked. Naming the two things you will ask about tells the client the call has a shape, not an open-ended sales pitch.
Template 3: The paid scoping engagement
For a brief this vague on a project this large, sometimes the right answer is not a free estimate. It is a paid step before the estimate.
Based on what you have shared, this project has enough open questions that a rough estimate would not serve either of us well. What I can offer instead is a scoping session. For a fixed fee of $[X], I will map your requirements into a defensible work breakdown and a real estimate range, delivered as a short document you can share internally. If you move forward with the build, this fee applies toward the project cost.
This template turns the two-line brief into revenue instead of a favor. It also filters out clients who were never going to pay for real work. A client who balks at a scoping fee was rarely going to sign a five-figure contract either.
Or skip the back-and-forth entirely. Drop the two lines into Prophic and start with a first-draft scope in five minutes, priced against your own rate card. See how it works.
The templates still cost you something
All three templates above are good replies. They also all cost you time.
You still have to notice the brief is vague. You still have to decide which of the three fits this client. You still have to write the qualifying questions, the calendar pitch, or the scoping offer by hand, then wait for a reply before any real scoping work starts.
Prophic is an AI-powered pre-sales platform for agencies, consultancies, and freelancers. It turns raw client requirements into a scoped work breakdown, effort estimate, and branded proposal in minutes. Feed it the same two lines from the email above, and it starts building the scope immediately, priced against your own configured rates, in your own proposal format. There is no template to pick because there is nothing left to write back.
The client's next email will not get longer on its own. Someone still has to make sense of two lines. The only question is whether that someone spends an hour doing it by hand, or five minutes reviewing what Prophic already built.