Capstone clients do not need another slide recap of the course calendar. They need to know what the team will deliver and to own one choice that changes the work. Status plus an approval. Everything else is a meeting you have not scheduled.
Most clients will never connect an assistant. Write for email.
Status a stranger could brief someone else with
What works now. What will work by the course deadline if they say ship. What you are proposing to cut. Dates. Write for a cold reader — they have a job besides your seminar.
If a date is a hope, label the assumption. A confident ship date your assistant inferred from a standup is how you get an approval you cannot meet.
Do not send the group's entire chat. Do not send three weeks of tickets. The client did not sign up to be in your classroom.
One approval
Ask for a decision: approve shipping without feature X, keep X and accept a later internal demo, or meet this week. Closed list. "Any thoughts?" is how you get a compliment and no scope.
A sufficient reply is one of those three. Invite a condition if you must: "ship without X, and put X on a post-term wish list." You are asking them to own the cut.
Give a deadline that matches a real constraint — a showcase, a vendor, a grading date — and say what you will do if they stay quiet. Silence without a default is how teams keep building the thing nobody wanted.
You approve the send; they approve the scope
The approval step is yours on the way out. Draft, read, confirm. A client should not receive a promise the model invented.
They do not need an account. Email and a link. If they already have RelayLink, you need an accepted contact.
No attachments. The demo lives at a URL you already use. The briefing is the status and the ask.
Nicknames stay private unless you share them. Write the name on their card.
If they block you, the block is silent. Use the email the course already has on file and the default you wrote.
When the cut fits in a line, connect your assistant and send the update before the showcase freezes the wrong scope.