Brag Sheets: summarize your work for reviews and 1:1s

Last updated: October 29, 2026

A brag sheet is an AI-written summary of one person's engineering work over a period you choose: the main areas they contributed to, example issues and pull requests, a summary of their code review participation, and a few key metrics. Use it as a first draft for a performance review, a promotion packet, or a 1:1.

Why it matters

For engineers: review season asks you to remember months of work. A brag sheet gathers what you shipped, where your effort went, and how you took part in code review, with links to the issues and pull requests behind each point. You start from evidence instead of memory, and you can bring it to a 1:1 to talk about the work you're proudest of.
For managers: use it to prepare reviews and 1:1s and to recognize wins that are easy to miss, such as steady work spread across many small pull requests or heavy review support for teammates. Treat it as a starting point for a conversation with the engineer, not a rating.

How it works

What Span reads

For the person and the period you pick, Span uses:

Pull requests they authored, with titles, descriptions, and Span's summary of each.
Issues credited to them in your issue tracker, with titles, descriptions, and summaries. Pull requests linked to an issue are grouped with it.
Code review threads on pull requests they authored or reviewed.
Workstreams and effort, when your organization uses workstreams, to group the work and show roughly how much time went to each area.
Metrics for the period: Time from First Commit to Merge (average), Weighted PRs / week, PR reviews / week, and AI code ratio when your organization has it turned on.

Brag sheets don't read the prompts or transcripts of agent traces. The only AI-usage figure in a brag sheet is AI code ratio.

What a brag sheet contains

Work Highlights: a short summary of the person's contributions and how their effort was distributed, followed by the most relevant areas of work. Each area lists specific achievements in the order they happened, with example issues and pull requests you can open.
Code Review Summary: one paragraph on how the person took part in reviews, as author and as reviewer.
Details: job title, job level, manager, and team, plus a Highlights Breakdown chart of effort by area.
Metrics: a table with each metric's value, the previous period, the change versus the previous period, and a benchmark against your organization. The table appears in the copied and downloaded versions, not on the Brag Sheet tab.

The text is written to be factual and neutral. It refers to the person by name, in the third person, and describes timing and level of effort without exact dates or day counts.

It's AI-written, so review it. A large language model writes the text from the data above. It can misread context, leave out work that isn't linked to the person in Span, or give a project more or less weight than it deserved. Read it, correct it, and add what it can't see (mentoring, design work, incidents handled outside your tools) before you share it.

How to generate a brag sheet

For yourself

Open your user menu in the left navigation and click Brag Sheet. This opens the Brag Sheet tab on your profile.
Click Generate. If you can use Src, choose Standard format.
In Generate brag sheet, select a date range: Previous half, Current half (to date), one of the last two complete quarters, or Custom (between 1 and 7 months long).
Click Generate. Span shows "Brag sheet generation started". It takes several minutes, and you can leave the page while it runs.
When it's ready, pick the period from the date menu at the top of the tab. Click Copy to copy the text, or Download and choose Download as Markdown or Download as PDF.

For someone you manage

Open the person's profile and select the Brag Sheet tab.
Follow steps 2 to 5 above. The brag sheet is saved on that person's profile.

For your whole organization (admins)

People with the Metrics Configuration permission can generate brag sheets for everyone at once in Settings → Brag Sheets (under Global).

Generate now: click Generate brag sheets (then Standard format if you can use Src), select a date range, and click Generate. Span creates a brag sheet for each active contributor who doesn't already have one for that exact date range.
Download: Previous brag sheets lists each period with how many brag sheets were generated and how many were skipped or failed. Use Download to get Download as PDF (ZIP), Download as Markdown (ZIP), or Download selected people.... The ZIP has one folder per manager.
Generate on a schedule: in Performance Cycle, choose Annual, Semiannual, or Quarterly and set the end date of each cycle. Span then generates brag sheets automatically at the end of each cycle for every active contributor who doesn't already have one that overlaps that cycle.

Tailored brag sheets with Src

If you can use Src, the Generate menu also offers Tailor with Src and starters such as Build a promotion case, Prepare for calibration, and Compare periods. These open Src in a new tab with a prompt filled in, so you can steer the focus. The result is delivered in your Src conversation as a download, not on the Brag Sheet tab.

Things to know

Three months of history. The person's start date in Span must be at least 3 months before the day you generate. Otherwise the tab shows "Not enough data available" with the message that their start date needs to be at least 3 months ago. A person with no start date in your roster is skipped the same way, so check the roster first.
Linked accounts and activity. The person needs a linked Git account (such as GitHub or GitLab) and at least one issue or pull request in the period. Otherwise Span shows that they need additional issue or PR data. Work done under an unlinked account is left out.
Contributor status. Organization-wide and scheduled runs include only active people marked as contributors. You can still generate a brag sheet for anyone else from their profile.
Who can generate and view. Anyone who can see a person's Brag Sheet tab can generate a brag sheet for them and read every brag sheet saved there. This is the Activity Summaries & Brag Sheets people permission. With the built-in permission groups, everyone has it for themselves, the Managers and Team Leads groups have it for their reports and team members, and Admins and Owners have it for everyone. Your organization may have changed these groups.
The person can see brag sheets about them. With the built-in groups, an engineer can open every brag sheet saved on their own profile, including ones their manager generated. Managers may want to say so when they use one in a review.
Sharing. There's no share link. To share a brag sheet, copy it or download it, then review and edit it before you send it.
Generating again. Each Generate creates a new brag sheet. Earlier ones stay in the date menu, newest period first, so you can compare versions.
Date range limits. A range must be at least 1 month and at most 7 months, and can't include future dates. Early in a half, Current half (to date) can be shorter than a month and is rejected.
Failures retry on their own. If generation fails, Span retries automatically. If a brag sheet still hasn't appeared after a while, contact support.
Worked example. On October 29, 2026, the date options are Previous half (January 1 to June 30, 2026), Current half to date (July 1 to October 29, 2026), and the quarters July 1 to September 30 and April 1 to June 30, 2026. Alex started on July 15, which is more than 3 months before October 29, so Alex can get a brag sheet for the current half. A Previous half brag sheet for Alex would be skipped, because Alex has no issues or pull requests before July. Sam started on August 15, so Sam's brag sheets are skipped until November 15. A Custom range from March 1 to October 29 is about 8 months, so Span rejects it with "Date range cannot exceed 7 months".

Need help?

Contact your Span account team or reach out to support@span.app.