The problem
Most codebase audits produce output that only developers can read. A PDF full of severity ratings, blast radius scores, and technical finding titles is useful to the engineer who has to fix things. It is not useful to the CTO deciding whether to sign a contract, the PE firm doing pre-acquisition diligence, or the agency owner trying to explain to a client why the project is going to cost more than the original quote.
The gap between what Ghost Architect finds and what a business decision-maker can act on has always been a translation problem. Someone has to take the technical findings and rewrite them in plain language. That work takes hours. It requires senior-level judgment. And it happens after the scan, not as part of it.
What Executive Brief does
Ghost Architect 8.2.1 ships Executive Brief. After every Points of Interest scan, you can select Executive Brief from the menu. Ghost makes one API call and generates a one-page business intelligence report.
The report has four parts. A health score from 0 to 100 with a plain-language label -- Healthy, Moderate Risk, Elevated Risk, High Risk, or Critical Risk. A three-paragraph executive summary written in consultant voice with no jargon and no code. A cost comparison table showing what remediation costs at senior architect rates versus what it costs using Ghost Brief and AI-assisted execution. And a recommended three-phase sequence -- critical findings first, high severity second, medium third.
The PDF writes to ~/Ghost Architect Reports/ alongside every other Ghost report. One menu selection. One API call. One page your client can read.
The number that closes deals
In our own dogfood run, the cost comparison table showed this:
| Approach | Effort | Estimated Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Manual remediation | 24 hrs | $4,800 |
| AI-assisted with Ghost Brief | ~3 hrs | ~$3.60 in API costs |
That table is the entire value proposition in two lines. A CTO reads it and the conversation is over. A PE firm puts it in the deal memo. An agency owner hands it to the client and the scope conversation changes completely.
The manual cost is calculated at a senior architect billing rate against the effort estimates Ghost surfaces in every scan. The AI-assisted cost reflects actual API token usage from Ghost Brief prompt execution. These are not projections. They come directly from the scan data.
Who it is for
Executive Brief is built for the person who signs the check, not the person who writes the code.
- CTOs and VPs of Engineering evaluating an inherited codebase before committing to a migration or a team
- PE and M&A teams doing technical due diligence before an acquisition closes
- Agency founders scoping a contract on an unfamiliar codebase and needing to justify the number to a client
- Fractional CTOs walking into a new engagement cold and needing to brief a board within the first week
The engineer still gets Ghost Brief with the full prompt pack. The executive gets one page they can read in 90 seconds and act on. Same scan. Two outputs. Two audiences.
Executive Brief does not replace the technical report. It sits alongside it. The engineer has the blast radius scores and the prompt pack. The executive has the health score and the cost comparison. Both outputs come from the same single scan.
How the health score works
The health score starts at 100 and deducts based on finding severity. Critical findings carry the most weight, high findings carry significant weight, and medium findings carry limited weight. The score is floored at 5 -- no codebase reads as zero. The five-band label maps cleanly to the number: Healthy (90+), Moderate Risk (70–89), Elevated Risk (50–69), High Risk (30–49), Critical Risk (below 30).
The three-paragraph narrative is generated by a single Claude call with a system prompt written to produce plain business language. No jargon. No code references. No markdown. Three paragraphs: what the overall health means for the business, what the top risks are in plain terms, and what the recommended path forward looks like and what it will take.
Availability
Executive Brief ships in Ghost Architect 8.2.1 and is available on Pro Max ($199/mo), Team Max ($799/mo), and Enterprise Max ($2,500/mo). Install or update now:
npm install -g ghost-architect-open@latestAfter updating, run any Points of Interest scan and select Executive Brief from the mode menu when the scan completes. The PDF writes to your Ghost Architect Reports folder immediately.
Executive Brief™ is live in v8.2.1.
One scan. One page. Every finding translated into language your client can act on immediately.
See Pro Max pricing →EJ Wisner, founder of Ghost Platform™