stackbrief brief --file <path> and stackbrief brief --staged are StackBrief Alpha's first daily-use workflows. They create concise, static briefs before a developer changes a file or submits a staged change.
The brief never infers a developer's objective or claims runtime certainty. It reports only source-cited repository facts and identifies what static analysis cannot resolve.
- Starting point: the canonical file selected by the developer.
- Relevant architecture: routes, services, databases, and external APIs reachable through local imports.
- Likely impact: direct import dependents and local files reached by import traversal.
- Observed constraints: factual architectural boundaries present in the traced path.
- Unknowns: dynamic/unresolved imports, absent directly connected tests, and static-analysis limits.
- Validation targets: directly connected test files.
- Evidence: deduplicated file and line citations.
stackbrief brief --staged merges the canonical file briefs for Git-indexed added, copied, modified, and renamed paths. It refuses to run when a staged path also has unstaged edits, because the scanner reads the current working-tree snapshot and must not claim that newer content is staged.
Deleted files and full Git-index snapshot analysis are intentionally outside Alpha scope.