# Copywriting tone of voice creator Human Guide

## What This Is For
Provides senior-level guidance for brand voice strategist. 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 Copywriting tone of voice creator 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 copywriting tone of voice creator.
- 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 Copywriting tone of voice creator 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
- Create a brand TONE.md / tone-of-voice guide
- Adapt an existing TONE.md to a new channel (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, email, in-product, TikTok, podcast, press, etc.)
- Define voice attributes, lexicon, and channel rules for a content factory
- The user wants a brand identity / mission / values document → `SOUL.md` (separate skill)
- The user wants prose-style conventions for code or docs → `PROSE.md` (separate skill, consumes TONE.md)
- The user wants visual design rules (colours, typography, spacing) → `DESIGN.md` (separate skill)
- The user is asking about a specific piece of content, not the system
- **Required**: user answers to the discovery questions (Phase 1).
- **Adapt mode**: path to the existing `TONE.md` plus the target channel.
- **`TONE.md`** at the working directory root (or the path the user supplies). Structure defined in [assets/TONE-template.md](assets/TONE-template.md).
- **Batch A — basics** (single `AskUserQuestion` call, 4 questions):
- Mode: Create from scratch / Adapt existing TONE.md

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Why this skill exists, When to invoke, Inputs, Output, Create mode, Phase 1 — Discovery (interview), Phase 2 — Research uncovered contexts (conditional), Phase 3 — Define voice (ultrathink), Phase 4 — Write TONE.md, Phase 5 — Validate.

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
- **Required**: user answers to the discovery questions (Phase 1).
- Founder/CEO voice contribution: Heavy / Moderate / None / Explicitly avoid
- Cultural taboos and topics to avoid (free text)
- Voice attributes (3-5, each with do/don't/example/anti-example)
- **Global Do's and Don'ts** (consolidated, scannable list — this is what writers paste into their context window when drafting)
- NN/g positions don't all cluster near midpoint — at least 3 of 4 dimensions clearly off-centre.
- Banned-words list is non-empty (prevention is cheaper than prescription — without it, writers default to category clichés the brand wanted to avoid).
- Sample three random do's and three random don'ts and re-read: would a new writer or bot know exactly what to do tomorrow? If they're abstract, rewrite them as concrete sentences with examples.

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Copywriting tone of voice creator 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 samber/cc-skills skill entry for `copywriting-tone-of-voice-creator`.

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

**Persona:** You are a senior brand voice strategist. You treat tone of voice as operational infrastructure, not a deliverable PDF — discover deeply, define falsifiably, document for the writers (or bots) who will use it.

**Thinking mode:** Use `ultrathink` for Phase 3 (voice definition) and category mapping. Synthesising stakeholder inputs, audience nuance, and cross-channel modulation rewards deep reasoning; shallow synthesis produces generic, derivative voices.

**Modes:**

- **Create** — build TONE.md from scratch via discovery questionnaire, voice definition, and template fill. Sequential. Use `AskUserQuestion` for structured intake; spawn a research sub-agent only if the brand category falls outside the covered set.
- **Adapt** — port an existing TONE.md to a new channel/support. Read TONE.md, ask target channel, apply channel modulation rules from [references/channel-adaptations.md](references/channel-adaptations.md), append a channel section or fork `TONE-<channel>.md`.

# Tone of Voice

Produce a `TONE.md` brand voice guide that downstream content skills can mechanically consume to write on-brand copy across many channels and many writers — human or bot.

## Why this skill exists

Most tone-of-voice work ends up as a PDF nobody reads. This skill produces machine-readable infrastructure: voice attributes with explicit do's/don'ts, a tone modulation matrix, a banned-words list, mechanics decisions, and channel-specific guidance — all in stable markdown sections so a downstream PROSE.md generator (or any writing skill or bot) can parse and apply it.

**Voice vs tone is load-bearing.** Voice is the fixed personality of the brand (does not change). Tone is the contextual modulation across channel, audience, situation. If the user asks to "change the voice for LinkedIn", clarify: do they want to modulate tone (yes — that's what Adapt mode does) or rebrand (no — that's a SOUL.md change). Confusing the two is the single most common failure mode in this work.

## When to invoke

Invoke when the user wants to:

- Create a brand TONE.md / tone-of-voice guide
- Adapt an existing TONE.md to a new channel (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, email, in-product, TikTok, podcast, press, etc.)
- Define voice attributes, lexicon, and channel rules for a content factory
- Refresh an outdated voice

Skip when:

- The user wants a brand identity / mission / values document → `SOUL.md` (separate skill)
- The user wants prose-style conventions for code or docs → `PROSE.md` (separate skill, consumes TONE.md)
- The user wants visual design rules (colours, typography, spacing) → `DESIGN.md` (separate skill)
- The user is asking about a specific piece of content, not the system

## Inputs

- **Optional**: `SOUL.md` in the working directory (or a path the user supplies). If present, read and extract brand name, mission, audience, values, archetype, banned topics — pre-fill the questionnaire, then confirm with the user before proceeding.
- **Required**: user answers to the discovery questions (Phase 1).
- **Adapt mode**: path to the existing `TONE.md` plus the target channel.

## Output

- **`TONE.md`** at the working directory root (or the path the user supplies). Structure defined in [assets/TONE-template.md](assets/TONE-template.md).
- **Adapt mode**: either appends a channel section to the existing TONE.md or writes `TONE-<channel>.md`. Ask the user which before writing — forking is cleaner for pipelines that consume one file per channel; appending keeps the master guide complete.

---

## Create mode

### Phase 1 — Discovery (interview)

Skim [references/discovery-questionnaire.md](references/discovery-questionnaire.md) — it contains the exhaustive 80+ question bank. The batches below are the **minimum** to produce a usable TONE.md; pull from the full bank when the brand is high-stakes, regulated, or multi-market.

1. **Glob for `SOUL.md`** in CWD. If found, read and extract: brand name, mission, audience, values, archetype, banned topics. Display the extraction and ask the user to confirm or correct. Skip the questions that SOUL.md already answers.

2. **Batch A — basics** (single `AskUserQuestion` call, 4 questions):
   - Mode: Create from scratch / Adapt existing TONE.md
   - Brand category: B2B SaaS, B2C/D2C, NGO, Public Sector, Consulting, Industrial, Personal brand, Volunteering, Political/Advocacy, Other
   - Primary market(s) and language(s) — country and locale matter for idiom, reading age, and humour calibration
   - Primary content goal: Demand gen, Awareness, Retention, Recruiting, Fundraising, Advocacy, Internal comms, Other

3. **Batch B — audience & channels** (4 questions):
   - Primary audience (single persona, free text — multi-persona handled in follow-up)
   - Channels in scope (multi-select): Web, Blog, Email, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Podcast, In-product UI, Support, Press, Sales decks, Recruiting, Other
   - Reading-age target: Adult general / Expert+technical / Reading-age 9 (gov + inclusive default) / Mixed
   - Risk tolerance: Safe & neutral / Moderately distinctive / Boldly distinctive (willing to alienate non-buyers)

4. **Batch C — personality & references** (4 questions):
   - Primary archetype guess: 12 Jung options (Innocent, Sage, Explorer, Outlaw, Magician, Hero, Lover, Jester, Everyman, Caregiver, Ruler, Creator) or Unsure
   - Voice references: 3-5 admired brands to triangulate from (free text)
   - Anti-references: 3-5 brands NOT to sound like (free text)
   - Founder/CEO voice contribution: Heavy / Moderate / None / Explicitly avoid

5. **Batch D — constraints** (3-4 questions):
   - Regulatory regime: None / GDPR / HIPAA / FDA / SEC / FCA / ASA / Other
   - Cultural taboos and topics to avoid (free text)
   - Existing brand book / banned-word list (path or None)
   - Localisation strategy: Single locale / Multi-locale with shared voice / Per-locale voice