State the search intent in one line before you ask for headings

When you ask an AI tool to brief a page, it's tempting to jump straight to "give me the headings." Don't. Ask it to state the search intent in one line first - informational, comparison, or action-ready - before it produces a single heading.

The reason this ordering matters: a heading structure is a downstream decision, not an independent one. A comparison-intent search wants the comparison near the top; an action-ready search wants the path to acting near the top; an informational search can afford a longer build-up. Skip straight to headings and the model defaults to whatever structure is most common for the topic in general, which quietly assumes an intent nobody actually checked.

Forcing the one-line intent statement first does two things. It makes the assumption visible, so you can correct it in one line if it's wrong, rather than discovering it three sections into a brief that's already built around the wrong reader. And it gives every heading that follows a reason for existing - "this section is here because a comparison-intent reader needs it early" is a decision you can defend, where "this is just how these pages are usually structured" isn't.

Next time you're briefing content, add "start with the intent in one line" to the prompt. If the model can't confidently name one, that's useful information too - it usually means the search term itself is genuinely ambiguous, and worth splitting into two separate pages rather than one page trying to serve both.