# Blog brand: durable editorial context Human Guide

## What This Is For
Establish durable brand and voice context for cross-skill consumption. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for brand and messaging: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Blog brand: durable editorial context agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for blog brand: durable editorial context.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Blog brand: durable editorial context guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- `BRAND.md`: who the audience is, what the brand stands for, what to never say
- `VOICE.md`: how the brand sounds, structurally and lexically
- **Primary audience role** (e.g. "head of marketing at a 50-500 person B2B SaaS")
- **Secondary audience** (optional)
- **Reader expertise level**: beginner / intermediate / advanced / mixed
- **Problems the reader is actively trying to solve** (3 to 5 bullets)
- **Common misconceptions the audience holds** (used to anchor information gain)
- **Official entity name** (legal or public brand name)
- **Homepage URL** (canonical brand front door)
- **Logo URL or file path** (preferred square or SVG asset)
- **sameAs profiles** (LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Crunchbase, GitHub, or other official profiles)
- **Wikidata Q-ID** if one exists; leave blank if not notable

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Why this exists, Commands, Init Workflow, Step 1: Audience, Step 2: Positioning and Canonical Entity, Step 3: Editorial rules, Step 4: Topic boundaries, Step 5: Voice (auto-fill from blog-persona if present), Output Files, BRAND.md template.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- `BRAND.md`: who the audience is, what the brand stands for, what to never say
- **What this brand is NOT** (anti-positioning, what to never be confused with)
- **Don't list** (3 to 7 things the blog will never do; e.g. "no clickbait titles," "no listicle filler")
- **Taboo phrases** (specific words or phrases this brand never uses; separate
- **Required disclosures** (e.g. affiliate disclosure, AI-content disclosure, conflict-of-interest patterns)
- **Headline patterns to avoid**: any patterns banned for this brand
- | Taboo phrases and editorial don'ts | Partial (don't list) | Full (taboo + disclosures + scope) |
- | Purpose-First Clarity | Reader and retrieval utility | Important sections state their point clearly; no prescribed heading form or passage length |

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Blog brand: durable editorial context human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the agricidaniel/claude-blog skill entry for `blog-brand`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Blog Brand: Durable Editorial Context

Generates two project-root files that the blog orchestrator auto-loads for supported writing and planning commands when present:

- `BRAND.md`: who the audience is, what the brand stands for, what to never say
- `VOICE.md`: how the brand sounds, structurally and lexically

These are the editorial equivalent of impeccable's PRODUCT.md / DESIGN.md pattern: persistent context that survives across sessions and propagates to every command.

## Why this exists

Today, persona JSON (from `blog-persona`) is loaded by some skills and not others. Topic-cluster context lives inside cluster vaults. Competitor positioning lives nowhere. Each blog command re-derives "what is the brand" from whatever context it has.

`BRAND.md` and `VOICE.md` fix this: one canonical source, loaded by the `blog` orchestrator at the start of every command.

When neither file exists, behavior is unchanged from v1.7.1. Backward compatible.

## Commands

| Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
| `/blog brand init` | Interactive interview, writes BRAND.md and VOICE.md to project root |
| `/blog brand show` | Display current contents (or report missing) |
| `/blog brand update` | Re-run the interview with current values as defaults |

## Init Workflow

Run the 5-step interactive interview. Ask each step, wait for response, then proceed. If `blog-persona` JSON already exists, pre-fill voice answers from it.

### Step 1: Audience

Ask:
- **Primary audience role** (e.g. "head of marketing at a 50-500 person B2B SaaS")
- **Secondary audience** (optional)
- **Reader expertise level**: beginner / intermediate / advanced / mixed
- **Problems the reader is actively trying to solve** (3 to 5 bullets)
- **Common misconceptions the audience holds** (used to anchor information gain)

### Step 2: Positioning and Canonical Entity

Ask:
- **Official entity name** (legal or public brand name)
- **Homepage URL** (canonical brand front door)
- **Logo URL or file path** (preferred square or SVG asset)
- **sameAs profiles** (LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Crunchbase, GitHub, or other official profiles)
- **Wikidata Q-ID** if one exists; leave blank if not notable
- **One-sentence brand mission** (what the brand helps people do)
- **Distinctive point of view** (the contrarian or non-obvious belief that shapes content)
- **What this brand is NOT** (anti-positioning, what to never be confused with)
- **Top 3 direct competitors** with the one-line differentiator vs each

### Step 3: Editorial rules

Ask:
- **Do list** (3 to 7 things the blog will always do; e.g. "cite primary sources only," "name the practitioner not the product")
- **Don't list** (3 to 7 things the blog will never do; e.g. "no clickbait titles," "no listicle filler")
- **Taboo phrases** (specific words or phrases this brand never uses; separate
  from the repository's optional project style list)
- **Required disclosures** (e.g. affiliate disclosure, AI-content disclosure, conflict-of-interest patterns)

### Step 4: Topic boundaries

Ask:
- **Topics fully in scope** (core content pillars)
- **Topics partially in scope** (adjacent; covered only with original angle)
- **Topics out of scope** (will not cover; redirect to partner content)
- **Recurring formats / column names** if any (e.g. "Monthly Field Notes," "Reader Q&A")

### Step 5: Voice (auto-fill from blog-persona if present)

Ask:
- **Pronoun stance**: first-person (we / I), second-person (you), third-person (the team), or mixed
- **Acceptable contractions**: full / partial / none
- **Sentence ceiling**: max words per sentence as a hard cap
- **Paragraph ceiling**: max words per paragraph (default 150)
- **Headline patterns to favor**: numbered / question / promise / statement
- **Headline patterns to avoid**: any patterns banned for this brand
- **Summary box label**: from blog-persona, or pick one

## Output Files