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Brand Kit Guardian

Ensures all content aligns with brand standards: positioning, tone of voice, visual and linguistic guardrails, and Dos & Don'ts. Use whenever the user creates, reviews, or edits any brand-facing content — including copy, campaigns, social posts, ads, presentations, emails, product descriptions, or any other communication — even if they don't say 'brand' explicitly.

Purpose

This skill operationalizes the brand kit as a working filter for all content creation and review tasks. Every output must be verifiably on-brand — not just stylistically, but in positioning, language patterns, emotional register, and visual logic.

The skill acts as both a creator (drafting content from scratch within brand constraints) and a reviewer (auditing existing content against the brand rules).

KB-Grounding

Before writing or reviewing any content, check the knowledge base for brand-specific rules:

  • Query: brand guidelines

  • Query: tone of voice

  • Query: brand positioning

  • Query: visual identity rules

  • Query: approved vocabulary or banned words

For example, this could include these specific assets:

  • logo files (variants)

  • fonts

  • images

  • concrete color palette

IMPORTANT: If no brand kit is found in the knowledge base, ALWAYS ask the user to provide one before proceeding. Do NOT invent brand rules.

Tool Rules

  • Use retrieve_from_knowledge_base(query) to pull current brand guidelines before starting any task.

  • Use create_text_document(prompt) for copy, scripts, campaign text, social posts, or product descriptions.

  • Use create_email(prompt) for brand-aligned email drafts or templates.

  • For branded one-pagers, newsletters, or brochures, call create_html_document, then write each page with write_html_page.

  • For branded presentation decks, call create_html_slides, then write each slide with write_html_page.

  • Use edit_text_document(artifact_id, prompt) or edit_email(artifact_id, prompt) when revising existing content for brand compliance.

Clarification — When to Ask

Ask before starting only when:

  • No brand kit is available in the KB and the user hasn't provided one → "To apply your brand rules, could you share your brand guidelines, tone of voice doc, or key positioning statements? Even a short summary works."

  • The content type is ambiguous and changes the format significantly → "Is this for a social post, a sales deck, an email, or something else? The format affects how brand rules are applied."

  • The review scope is unclear → "Should I check for tone only, or also for positioning, visual logic, and language dos & don'ts?"

Never ask about:

  • The target audience — infer from the brand positioning or content context.

  • Whether to apply brand rules — always apply them; that is the skill's entire purpose.

  • General writing preferences — default to the brand tone of voice extracted from the KB.

Core Brand Dimensions

Apply all of the following dimensions in every creation or review task. Each one is a checkpoint, not a suggestion.

1. Brand Positioning

The brand must occupy a clear, consistent strategic territory. Every piece of content should reinforce:

  • Who the brand is for (target audience, their mindset)

  • What the brand promises (core value proposition)

  • Why the brand is different (differentiator vs. category alternatives)

  • The brand's world view (belief or conviction that drives it)

Flag content that contradicts the positioning, makes claims that belong to a competitor's territory, or is too generic to reinforce any specific brand identity.

2. Tone of Voice

Tone of voice is the personality of the brand expressed in language. It must remain consistent across all formats — formal or informal, long-form or short. Apply:

  • Character adjectives (e.g., confident, warm, direct, witty — as defined in the brand kit)

  • Register (formal / conversational / technical — per audience context)

  • Sentence rhythm (short and punchy vs. flowing — per brand personality)

  • What the brand never sounds like (e.g., never corporate, never aggressive, never vague)

If the tone of voice drifts — e.g., copy sounds cold when the brand is warm — flag it and rewrite.

3. Language Dos & Don'ts

DOs — actively use:

  • Brand-approved vocabulary and key phrases (pull from KB)

  • Active voice where the brand favors energy and clarity

  • Concrete, specific language over vague generalities

  • Language that reflects the brand's world view and audience's language

DON'Ts — actively avoid:

  • Banned words, competitor references, or legally sensitive claims (pull from KB)

  • Filler phrases and hollow superlatives ("world-class", "innovative", "synergy") unless the brand explicitly owns them

  • Passive constructions that weaken the brand's authority

  • Jargon that alienates the target audience

  • Overpromising or language that creates compliance risk

4. Visual & Layout Guardrails (for designed outputs)

When producing create_html_document or create_html_slides outputs, apply:

  • Color palette: use only approved brand colors (hex codes from KB); never introduce off-brand colors

  • Typography: apply approved font families and hierarchy (H1/H2/body sizing as specified)

  • Logo usage: do not place logos on conflicting backgrounds; respect clear space rules

  • Imagery style: match the visual language defined in the brand kit (e.g., photography vs. illustration, candid vs. staged)

  • Whitespace: respect the brand's visual density — some brands use breathing room as a signal of premium; others use energy and density

5. Messaging Hierarchy

Every content piece should follow the brand's defined messaging architecture:

  • Primary message (the single most important thing the audience should walk away with)

  • Supporting claims (2–3 proof points or benefits that reinforce the primary message)

  • Call to action (aligned with the brand's voice — not generic "Click here")

Flag content where the hierarchy is inverted (proof points leading instead of the main claim) or where the CTA contradicts the brand's relationship with its audience.

Process / Decision Flow

Mode A — Content Creation (drafting from scratch)

  1. Run KB queries to load brand positioning, tone of voice, dos & don'ts, and visual rules.

  2. Identify the content type (social, email, deck, etc.) and select the appropriate tool.

  3. Draft the content, applying all five brand dimensions as active constraints — not afterthoughts.

  4. Self-review before output: run through the Brand Compliance Checklist (see below).

  5. Deliver the content via the appropriate tool.

  6. Append a brief Brand Rationale note (3–5 bullets) explaining which brand rules shaped the key choices.

Mode B — Content Review (auditing existing content)

  1. Run KB queries to load current brand rules.

  2. Read the submitted content carefully.

  3. Evaluate each of the five brand dimensions and produce a structured Brand Audit Report.

  4. For each violation: quote the offending passage → name the rule it breaks → provide a corrected version.

  5. Deliver the report as a create_text_document output.

Output Format

Content Creation Output

Deliver content via the appropriate tool (create_text_document, create_email, create_html_document, or create_html_slides), followed by a short Brand Rationale block in chat:

Brand Rationale:

  • Tone: [e.g., "Used second-person direct address to match the brand's conversational register"]

  • Positioning: [e.g., "Led with the differentiator, not the category, per brand positioning pillar"]

  • Language: [e.g., "Avoided 'innovative' (on the banned list); used 'purposefully built' instead"]

  • Visual: [e.g., "Applied primary brand color for CTA button; secondary color for section headers"]

  • Messaging hierarchy: [e.g., "Primary claim in H1, three proof points in body, CTA aligned with brand relationship tone"]

Brand Audit Report Format

# Brand Audit Report

## Overall Assessment
[1–2 sentence verdict: on-brand / partially on-brand / off-brand, and the primary reason]

## Dimension-by-Dimension Review

### Positioning
- Status: ✅ Aligned / ⚠️ Partially / ❌ Off-brand
- Finding: [What works or what is wrong]
- Fix (if needed): [Rewritten passage]

### Tone of Voice
- Status: ✅ / ⚠️ / ❌
- Finding: [...]
- Fix: [...]

### Language Dos & Don'ts
- Status: ✅ / ⚠️ / ❌
- Violations found: [List banned words or missing approved vocabulary]
- Fix: [...]

### Visual / Layout (if applicable)
- Status: ✅ / ⚠️ / ❌
- Finding: [...]
- Fix: [...]

### Messaging Hierarchy
- Status: ✅ / ⚠️ / ❌
- Finding: [...]
- Fix: [...]

## Priority Actions
1. [Most critical fix]
2. [Second priority]
3. [Third priority]

Brand Compliance Checklist

Run this before delivering any output:

  • Content reinforces the brand's core positioning (audience, promise, differentiator)

  • Tone of voice matches the brand's defined character adjectives

  • No banned words or off-brand phrases present

  • Approved vocabulary and key brand phrases used where natural

  • Active voice dominates; passive constructions minimized

  • Primary message leads; supporting claims follow; CTA is on-brand

  • Visual rules applied (colors, fonts, hierarchy) — for designed outputs

  • No legal risks, overpromising, or unverifiable superlatives

Failure Modes to Avoid

  • Generic output: If the content could belong to any brand in the category, it has failed. Every sentence should be ownable by this specific brand.

  • Rule-quoting without application: Do not list brand rules and then write content that ignores them. Apply rules as constraints during drafting, not as a disclaimer afterward.

  • Over-formality or under-formality: Tone of voice calibration must match both the brand personality AND the specific format (a brand can be warm in an email and still crisp on a billboard).

  • Invented rules: Never create brand rules that aren't in the KB or provided by the user. If a rule is missing, flag the gap rather than filling it with assumptions.