Create and collaborate on documents

Create, organize, edit, comment on, export, and recover documents in Brief.

Last updated: October 20, 2026

Documents is a place to write, file, and discuss material your team needs later. Folder access determines who can see a document.

Create and organize documents

  1. Open Documents and choose a folder. The top-level Documents view is a folder list; choose a folder before creating a document.
  2. Select New Document. Brief opens an empty Untitled document. Select its title to rename it, then write in the editor.
  3. To add a folder, select New Folder in the folder view, or New Folder... from a folder's navigation menu. Enter a name and create it.

Use Upload to add supported PDFs, Office files, text files, images, and audio to the selected folder. You can also drag a folder from your computer into an open Documents folder to upload its files and nested folders. Each file must be 10 MB or smaller; unsupported or oversized files are skipped during a folder upload. Binary uploads count toward a 1 GB workspace storage limit; an upload that would exceed it is rejected. To reorganize items, drag them onto another folder, or use Cut and Paste in the file browser where those actions are shown. The item's context menu also offers Rename and Delete where permitted. System folders cannot be renamed, cut, or deleted. A document's Unstarred or Starred control changes its favorite status.

Edit and discuss

Brief documents and supported text uploads can be edited as text. Uploaded PDFs, images, audio, and Office files can be viewed but cannot be edited as document text. For editable documents, text changes save as you work. The regular editor shows Saving..., Saved, or Save failed. When live editing is available, people can edit the same document at once, see each other's changes as they happen, and see who else is present. Its status can show Live · Saving…, Live · Saved, or Not saving. If a connection or save fails, follow the on-screen recovery notice; a persistent live save failure shows a retrying notice with Retry. If Brief detects conflicting edits, choose Keep my changes as a copy to preserve your local text in a sibling document, or Discard changes and reload to use the current version. If the document was deleted during editing, keep a copy before leaving the page. If your changes are too large to save, use Download my changes.

Select Comments to open the discussion panel. Write a comment, or first select text in the document to anchor the comment to that passage. Type @ to mention a workspace member when the picker offers them. In a thread, use Reply, Resolve, or Reopen. Agent-authored comments show their agent attribution. If a comment's quoted passage can no longer be found in the document, the panel says Can't locate this text anymore.

Open Version history on an editable document to choose an earlier version. The preview is read-only; select Exit Preview to return to the current text, or Restore this version and confirm Restore. Restoring creates a new version, so the previous current version remains in history. On editable and Office documents, the Download menu offers Download as PDF and Download as Markdown; open comments are included when available. Wait for comments to load if the export options are temporarily disabled.

From the CLI, use brief docs comments list <id> to read comments and replies. To add one, use brief docs comments create <id> --body "Your comment". Add --quote "passage" to anchor it, --reply-to <comment-id> to reply to a thread, or --agent <name> to attribute it to an agent acting for you. Adding a comment requires a credential with write scope and access to view the document; it does not require permission to edit the document itself. Agent edits also follow document access. When an agent changes a document's body during live editing, make any title or folder change as a separate action.

Recover deleted documents

Use an item's Delete action to move it to Trash. Open Trash and select Restore beside a document or folder to recover it. Restoring a folder also restores the documents deleted with that folder. For documents, Delete permanently removes one document and Empty Trash removes the trashed documents. These permanent deletion actions cannot be undone.

On a private deployment, live editing requires collaboration to be enabled and an HTTPS certificate; otherwise the editor uses its regular save path. For filing messages into folders, see Email Brief and file messages.