Syndicate Links — Agent Skill

Use this skill when the user wants to design, prototype, or write copy for Syndicate Links — the affiliate / publisher infrastructure for the agent economy. The brand is editorial-warm, paper-toned, and mono-accented in burnt-sienna rust.

What you have

README.md                  ← read first; full brand/voice/visuals reference
colors_and_type.css        ← all design tokens (color, type, spacing, motion)
fonts/                     ← Söhne weights (woff2)
assets/                    ← logos, OG, hero art, video
preview/                   ← rendered token & component cards
ui_kits/
  marketing/landing.html         ← syndicatelinks.co
  merchant-dashboard/dashboard.html  ← app.syndicatelinks.co
  publisher-portal/portal.html       ← affiliate.syndicatelinks.co
  blog/blog.html                     ← /blog + article view

How to start any task

1. Read `README.md`. It carries Content Fundamentals (voice, casing, punctuation, sample copy) and Visual Foundations (color, type, layout, motion, shadows, radii).
2. Link `colors_and_type.css` in your output. Every token referenced in this skill comes from it. Do not redefine.
3. Open the closest UI kit in ui_kits/ and lift the chrome — sticky pill nav, warm card recipe, dark code block. Do not start from scratch.
4. Copy assets from assets/ into the artifact. Never link cross-project.

The five non-negotiables

1. Italic Instrument Serif headlines. All h1/h2/h3 are italic, tight-tracked, sentence case. The pairing with dry Söhne body is the brand's signature.
2. Single accent. Burnt sienna #b5411f is the only accent. Per-page contextual accent is allowed (publishers rust, merchants slate-blue #4a7ac6, agencies near-black graphite #2a2a2a) — never invent a fourth.
3. Warm cards, not white. Body cards use the gradient + 1.5px border + inner highlight recipe at 18px radius. White surfaces appear only inside form inputs and the pill nav.
4. One dark band per page. The #0c0c0c code-preview block is the only dark surface in marketing. The dashboard has zero dark bands; the portal has one (the topbar).
5. No emoji, no stock photos, no glossy gradients. The only graphical glyphs are → ↗ ⚡ ✓ ⚠, used in monospace contexts.

Voice in three lines

• Sentence case. Em-dashes. Italic clause as the rhetorical pivot.
• "you" (the reader), "we" (the company). Never "users."
• Short. Direct. Slightly contrarian. State the position, name the alternative, name the trade-off.

Sample headline shapes that work:

• "Affiliate infrastructure / for the agent economy."
• "Three things the platforms / refuse to fix."
• "Why we do not hold your money / for sixty days."

Common asks

Three things to avoid

• A second accent color. Adding teal, purple, or a bright blue immediately reads off-brand.
• Title Case headlines. Sentence case only. The italic serif does the heavy lifting; capitals make it look like a SaaS landing page.
• Drop shadows in cool grey. Always warm-tinted: rgba(26,26,26,X), never rgba(0,0,0,X) or rgba(50,50,90,X).

When unsure

The README is the canonical reference. The UI kits show how the README's rules play out in real surfaces. If something looks generic, lift a detail from a UI kit (the pill nav, the receipt tape, the rust pull-quote, the warm-card recipe) — that's usually the missing brand-specific note.