Brief
The Brief is your morning edition from Zinley — one dated write-up of what moved, what it handled, and what needs you. Open Brief from the sidebar.
It's composed once a day, at a time you choose (7:30 AM by default), and it reads like a note from a chief of staff rather than a list of notifications.
What's in an edition
Sections always come in the same order, so you learn where to look:
| Section | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Headline & topline | The one-line read on your day (e.g. "2 decisions for you — one is due Thursday"), then a short paragraph of gist. |
| Decisions | Things that need you — an approval, a choice, a call to make. |
| Handled | What Zinley did on its own since the last edition. |
| Your day | Work you planned, plus deadlines and scheduled runs. |
| Watching | Open commitments other people owe you — the chase board, with how many days it's been and how often Zinley has nudged. |
| New people | Anyone Zinley met that you haven't looked at yet. |
| Ahead | Anything with a clock in the next ~72 hours, plus confirmed meetings coming up. |
Each matter is written up as its own card — a headline for the day's development, a where it stands paragraph, a short diary of timestamped events, and the people involved. Cards are tagged by state (needs a call, waiting, settled), and anything Zinley researched on that matter rides along with it.
Decisions in the Brief are the same items you see in your Inbox — deal with one here and it clears everywhere. Rows tell you when a decision has carried over from earlier days, so nothing quietly ages out. Your day is deliberately kept out of the decisions count: a to-do you already chose isn't a question Zinley is asking you.
The edition also closes with a bottom line — the do-this-today sentence — and an estimate of how long it'll take to clear your decisions.
Moving between days
The header shows which edition you're reading — for example "Sunday, July 5 · past edition". The controls on the top-right:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| ‹ (left) | Go to the previous stored edition. |
| Today | Jump back to today's edition. |
| › (right) | Go to the next stored edition. |
| ⟳ Refresh | Recompose today's edition from Zinley's latest activity. |
Past editions are kept exactly as they were written — they're a record of that day, not a live view. Today's is the one that changes: Refresh rebuilds it, and it also refreshes itself right after you act on something so the change shows immediately. If you open the Brief before the morning compose has run, you'll get a provisional edition built on the spot.
Anything to open, opens
Every item in the Brief links back to where the work actually lives — a decision opens its topic with the controls ready, a Watching row opens the commitment being chased, a new person opens their profile. Nothing in the Brief is a dead end.
Get it by email
Beyond the dashboard, Zinley can email you the same edition each morning from your agent's own address. In your settings you control:
- Morning email — the on/off toggle.
- Time — when it's composed and sent (default 7:30 AM).
- Timezone — the zone that time is read in, and the one that dates each edition.
The email is deliberately plain text — it reads fine on any phone, threads properly, and it's replyable.
Replying to the email acts
This is the useful part: reply to the Brief and Zinley does the thing. Plain words work — "approve the invoice", "let it breathe", "chase them again" — and your reply runs through the same email command loop as any other message to your agent. Reply !help to see the shorthand commands.
When it's a quiet day
Zinley doesn't pad the edition. If nothing needs you, you'll get a short one that says so — "No calls or deadlines require your attention today." That's the whole point: the number at the top only means something if it's allowed to be zero.