playbook

Build a brand-voice system Claude can actually use

Reverse-engineer your voice from the writing you're proud of into a reusable doc — then use it to keep every future draft, from any teammate, on-brand.

medium ~1 hour to build, reused forever

when to reach for this

"Write it in our brand voice" is meaningless to Claude — and honestly to most of your team — unless the voice is written down. The fix isn't to write an adjective list ("friendly, bold, human"); it's to extract concrete, testable rules from copy you already love, into a brand-voice.md you paste into every content task. Build it once and every other Marketing playbook gets sharper, because "our voice" finally points at something.

gather this first

3–6 pieces you're proud of — posts, emails, landing pages. Paste them in or save as files.
1–2 pieces that felt OFF-brand (a draft a vendor sent, an old post that makes you wince). Counter-examples teach as much as examples.
Any existing style notes, however rough.

the workflow

01
Extract the rules from your best writing

Have Claude infer the patterns rather than you trying to articulate them. It's much easier to recognize your voice than to define it from scratch.
you ask
```
Here are 5 pieces of our writing I'm proud of. Reverse-engineer our voice into rules: sentence length and rhythm, vocabulary we use and avoid, how we open and close, our stance on jargon/emoji/exclamation points, and the feeling a reader should walk away with. Be specific and testable, not vague adjectives.
```
what you get back A concrete rule set — "short declarative sentences, one idea each; no exclamation points; we explain before we name; we never say 'leverage' or 'seamless'" — grounded in your actual copy.
02
Sharpen it with counter-examples

Feed in the off-brand pieces and ask what makes them wrong. Negative space defines the voice as much as the positive rules.
you ask
```
Here are 2 pieces that feel OFF-brand for us. For each, name exactly what breaks our voice, and add 'we don't…' rules to the voice doc so a future draft avoids it.
```
what you get back A do/don't list with specific failure modes ("we don't open with a rhetorical question; we don't stack three adjectives") — the guardrails that catch drift.
03
Assemble the reusable doc

Pull it all into one clean artifact, with examples baked in. The examples are the most important part — they're what Claude actually pattern-matches on.
you ask
```
Assemble everything into a clean brand-voice.md: a one-paragraph summary, a numbered rule list, a do/don't table, and 3 short before/after rewrites showing a flat line turned into our voice. Keep it under one page.
```
what you get back A single, paste-ready brand-voice.md — summary, rules, do/don'ts, and worked before/afters.

Save this file. It becomes the first thing you paste into every content task from here on.
04
Battle-test it on a cold draft

Prove the doc works by having Claude apply it to something new, then to something deliberately bad, so you can see it catch and correct.
you ask
```
Using only brand-voice.md, rewrite this flat product paragraph in our voice — then show me a version that VIOLATES three of our rules and label which rules it breaks. I want to see the doc working in both directions.
```
what you get back An on-voice rewrite plus an annotated off-voice one — proof the doc is specific enough to both guide and catch.

make it your own

**Per-channel voices:** extend the doc with a short LinkedIn vs X vs email section if your tone shifts by channel.
**Onboard humans too:** the same doc is the best onboarding for new writers and freelancers — it's not just for Claude.
**Make it a skill:** advanced teams can turn brand-voice.md into a reusable skill or /onbrand command so it's always loaded (see the *Features* tab).

watch out for

Adjectives are not rules. "Bold and human" gives Claude nothing; a before/after rewrite gives it everything. Bias the doc toward examples.
Refresh it when your voice genuinely evolves — but don't let it churn every week, or it stops being a stable reference.
A voice doc makes drafts *sound* right; it doesn't make claims *be* right. Still fact-check.

you'll end up with A one-page `brand-voice.md` that makes "our voice" a concrete, testable thing — sharpening every other content task and onboarding humans and Claude alike.

Extract the rules from your best writing

Sharpen it with counter-examples

Assemble the reusable doc

Battle-test it on a cold draft