The debrief

The debrief is a questionnaire you send your client. They fill it out on the web at debrief.lesarchives.app, you never chase a Google Doc, and their answers land against the job and stay there.

Nothing else you do for a job pays off this widely. Everything les Archives writes is downstream of it.

What it asks

One hundred and one questions across fourteen sections. Twenty-seven are required and the rest are optional, so a couple can move fast or go deep.

Two things about the writing worth knowing. The form is gender-neutral throughout, and the questions carry name tokens rather than "bride" and "groom", so the form addresses your couple by their actual first names from question three onward.

The permissions section isn't boilerplate. It's where a couple tells you to use first names only, keep an employer out of print, or hold everything until a publication has had first look. Read it before you post anything.

Who fills it in

Not always the couple. NEW JOB, under Or start with intake, gives you two ways to start the same form, and the job records which one you chose.

Both start the same way. Name the client, and les Archives makes the placeholder job before branching.

Choosing to fill it in yourself does more than change who is typing. Section headings and question wording swap to a photographer-facing version, so "WHAT YOU WORE" reads as "WHAT THEY WORE". A handful of questions that only the couple can truthfully answer, the in-their-own-words section and the permissions section among them, are hidden entirely.

Sending it to the couple

There is one live route. Open NEW JOB, then Send the couple their debrief.

The older second route, a Send Debrief button in an Output & SEO card inside the job drawer, isn't in the shipping app. That card is switched off and never appears, so ignore any instruction that sends you there.

1. Open the send sheet. The job needs a client name. Without one the tile is disabled, because the public form would otherwise greet your couple with a folder name.

2. Edit, then send. Subject and message are written for you, and the link is generated the moment the sheet opens. Change any of it. The questions sit below the email fields if you want to cut or add something for this couple specifically. Then press Copy to take the link, or Open in Mail to hand off to your mail client with everything filled in.

Watching it come back

The job card carries the state. Awaiting Debrief before you send, Debrief Sent after, then Awaiting Photos once the couple finalizes.

The job's reference documents area grows a Client debrief tile with a matching subtitle: sent, client opened the link, in progress and saving as they type, or finalized with the date. Click it to read every answer.

The Dashboard keeps the running count. The Debriefs card has three buckets, out, in progress, and back, plus the three most recent arrivals by name. The hero band at the top counts debriefs back this week. The activity feed logs each one as it lands.

What a finished debrief changes

Cataloging. The full debrief now travels with every frame we write about, not a handful of picked-out highlights. Your notes on the job and any reference PDFs go with it. The whole bundle is assembled and then fair-cut to a character budget, so one enormous planner deck can't crowd out everything else, but nothing is pre-filtered on your behalf.

Captions and carousels. The same answers, so a caption can name the song or the dish instead of describing what's visibly in the frame.

Submission Brief. The branded PDF for editors is built almost entirely from the debrief. Couple bio, love story, design vision, the full vendor list, three quote-worthy lines, exclusivity status.

Quote Library. Quotable answers become tagged, searchable lines you can drop into any draft with attribution back to the couple.

Fixing an answer after the fact

Open the Client debrief tile and edit. A couple who forgot a vendor or misspelled an atelier is the usual case. Your edits are stamped separately from theirs, so the record still shows what they wrote, and everything downstream picks up the change immediately.

Changing the questions for good

Catalog, then the Templates tab, then Default Debrief. Two things sit there.

The Studio Master is the set we ship with every install. View only. The floor you can always get back to.

Your Debrief is your copy, and you can do anything you like to it. Reorder, reword, delete, add. Eight block types, from short text and dates through vendor blocks and section headers. Changes flow into every job you send from then on, and never into a debrief already sent.

Jobs that will never have one

Old work, a couple who won't fill out a form, a shoot that was never a wedding. Write what you remember into About this job, or drop a planner's timeline into reference documents. It isn't the same, but it's far better than nothing.

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