Start Here: Build Your Portfolio Brief
After this, you'll have a formatted Portfolio Brief: a single paragraph Claude uses as context for everything it builds in this track. Every lesson prompt starts with this brief. Writing it once means you never have to re-explain yourself to Claude again.
The idea
One paragraph about who you are, written once, makes every Claude prompt in this track sharper. Before you start building, you need one thing: a single paragraph that tells Claude who you are. This is your Portfolio Brief. It travels with you through every lesson in this track, sitting at the top of every Claude prompt. Without it, you brief Claude cold each time, re-explaining your role, your goal, your clients from scratch. With it, Claude builds everything in context.
Here is the before and after: Without a Portfolio Brief, you reach the copy lesson and Claude writes generic creative-professional copy that could describe anyone. With a Portfolio Brief, Claude reads that you are a food photographer targeting editorial clients and writes bio copy specific to that context: specific tagline options, a short bio that names your specialty, project descriptions in the right register. When you reach the build lesson, it generates a photography portfolio with an image grid and an editorial contact form, not a developer portfolio with a GitHub links section.
Now try it: answer the five questions in the exercise below (role, specialty, audience, goal, current situation) and Claude assembles them into a formatted brief. Copy it. Save it somewhere you can find it in the next lesson. Every prompt in this track starts with your brief. Five minutes here makes every other lesson better.
Try it (4 min)
Watch out for
- Writing vague answers like 'I do creative work.' Claude cannot personalize your portfolio from that. The more specific your answers, the more specific the output across all 7 lessons.
- Skipping this lesson because you want to start building. Every subsequent lesson is better with the brief. 5 minutes here saves 30 minutes of generic output later.
- Treating the brief as permanent. You can update it anytime. If your specialty shifts or your audience changes, rerun this lesson and update your brief.
- Writing the brief yourself without using Claude. The point of this lesson is to practice the briefing pattern, not just to produce a paragraph.
- Briefing Claude cold without looking at examples first. Before you answer the five questions, spend 5 minutes on Aura Build: search for portfolio components, find a project grid and hero layout you like, and name them in your answers. 'A masonry grid similar to what I saw on aura.build' gives Claude a specific visual target, not a guess.
Paste this into Claude
Help me write my Portfolio Brief. I'll answer five questions and you'll assemble them into a short paragraph I can paste at the start of any Claude prompt in this track. Here are my answers: 1. My role: [your exact job title, e.g., "freelance video editor" / "commercial photographer" / "motion designer" / "UX designer"] 2. My specialty: [what you do best within that role, e.g., "documentary and branded content editing" / "product and food photography" / "2D commercial animation" / "mobile app design for fintech"] 3. My audience: [who you want visiting your portfolio, e.g., "advertising agencies and production companies" / "editorial magazines and direct-to-consumer brands" / "startups and SaaS companies" / "creative directors at studios"] 4. My goal: [what you want them to do, e.g., "reach out for freelance projects" / "hire me as a full-time editor" / "book a consultation call" / "consider me for upcoming campaigns"] 5. My current situation: [where you are right now, e.g., "5 years of experience, showreel ready on Vimeo" / "just finishing my degree, building my first portfolio" / "transitioning from in-house to freelance, replacing my LinkedIn as my main presence"] Please write my Portfolio Brief as one paragraph, starting with "I am a..." and ending with "Help me build a portfolio that..." Make it specific enough that Claude could brief a web designer using only this paragraph: include my specialty, who I'm targeting, and what I want them to do.
What good looks like
- Claude returned a single paragraph that starts with 'I am a' and ends with 'Help me build a portfolio that'
- The brief mentions your specific role (not just 'creative professional')
- The brief names your target audience specifically (not just 'potential clients')
- You have copied the brief and saved it somewhere you can find it in the next lesson
- Reading the brief back to yourself, it sounds like how you would actually describe yourself to a new client
When this breaks
- Breaks when answers are too vague. If Claude produces a generic brief that could apply to anyone, your answers were not specific enough. Go back and add concrete details: industry, platform, years of experience, specific client type.
- Breaks when the user does not save the brief before moving on. Every lesson assumes you have it. Write it down now.
AI can help with this
Use Claude or your build tool to help you you'll have a formatted Portfolio Brief: a single paragraph Claude uses as context for everything it builds in this track. Every lesson prompt starts with this brief. Writing it.... Start with the exercise prompt and your real input. Ask for one draft, then check it against this proof: Claude returned a single paragraph that starts with 'I am a' and ends with 'Help me build a portfolio that'. Accept only the version you can verify yourself.
You can now
Claude returned a single paragraph that starts with 'I am a' and ends with 'Help me build a portfolio that'
- The brief mentions your specific role (not just 'creative professional')
- The brief names your target audience specifically (not just 'potential clients')
- You have copied the brief and saved it somewhere you can find it in the next lesson
- Reading the brief back to yourself, it sounds like how you would actually describe yourself to a new client
Key takeaways
Your Portfolio Brief is the one thing Claude needs to personalize everything it builds for you. Five minutes of specificity here pays off across all seven lessons. Copy it. Keep it close.
- Your Portfolio Brief is a one-paragraph context layer Claude reads before every prompt in this track.
- Specific answers produce specific output. 'Food photographer targeting editorial clients' is better than 'photographer.'
- Save the brief somewhere accessible: you paste it into Claude at the start of every lesson.
- The brief can be updated. If your situation changes, rerun this lesson.
- This is the only lesson where the output is a paragraph you keep. Everything else produces your actual portfolio.