brand-voice

Brand writing enforcement for Claude Code — automatic, configurable, zero-friction.

Every time Claude writes or edits a Markdown file, brand-voice checks it against your brand guidelines and signals Claude to fix violations before the file saves. No manual review. No rule reminders in every prompt.

brand-voice demo

Claude reads the violation list, corrects the file, and retries the write — automatically.

Why brand-voice?

Your brand guidelines live in a doc somewhere. Claude doesn't read them unless you paste them into every prompt. Even then, the rules drift over time.

brand-voice makes the rules structural:

• Works for any company — configure your own vocabulary, voice, and visual identity
• Auto-corrects, doesn't just report — the PostToolUse hook blocks bad writes and triggers a retry
• Covers the full stack — hook for Claude Code, MCP server for on-demand checks, CLI for CI pipelines
• Smart about code — ignores fenced blocks, indented code, inline code spans, and table cells
• Escape hatches — .brand-voice-ignore for whole files, <!-- brand-voice-disable-line --> for individual lines
• Visual identity included — colors, fonts, logo URLs live in the same guidelines file

Install

npm install -g brand-voice

Or run without installing:

npx brand-voice@latest check

Requires Node.js 18+.

Quick Start

Option A — Guided setup in Claude Code (recommended)

Run the setup skill inside any Claude Code session:

/brand-voice-setup

The skill does everything:

1. Asks whether you have existing brand docs or want to answer four questions
2. Optionally researches your brand automatically via web
3. Writes brand-guidelines.md to your project
4. Injects a summary block into CLAUDE.md
5. Registers the PostToolUse hook in .claude/settings.json
6. Registers the MCP server in .mcp.json

After setup, every .md and .mdx file Claude touches is checked automatically.

Option B — Manual setup

# 1. Install
npm install -g brand-voice

# 2. Create brand-guidelines.md in your project root (see schema below)

# 3. Register the hook
brand-voice setup

How It Works

Three components work together:

What gets checked

Code blocks, inline code, indented blocks, and table rows are never checked — only prose.

Never checked: physical line length or line breaks. The CLAUDE.md injection always includes a formatting rule telling Claude to write continuous paragraphs and let the renderer word-wrap, but the analyzer itself has no line-width rule and never will — sentence length is measured in words, not characters or lines, so hard-wrapped and unwrapped prose score identically.

PostToolUse hook exit codes

Exit 1 is never used (it aborts the session rather than triggering a retry).

brand-guidelines.md

One Markdown file holds your entire brand configuration. Keep it under 600 words so it fits cleanly in context.

# Brand Guidelines

## Persona
Who you are and who you write for.

## Tone & Voice
- Direct, honest, clear
- Person: second          ← "first" | "second" | "third"
- Voice: active           ← "active" | "passive"
- Sentences: max 25 words
- Contractions: yes       ← "yes" | "no"
- Exclamation marks: no

## Vocabulary
**Always use:** Acme, Acme Platform, APIs
**Avoid:** leverage, utilize, synergy, seamless
**Forbidden:** [competitor names, unverified claims]

## On-Tone Examples
> Connect your data in minutes — Acme handles the routing.

## Off-Tone Examples
> Leverage our cutting-edge platform to seamlessly integrate.

## Visual Identity
- Primary color: #006EFA
- Secondary color: #0050C3
- Accent color: #FF9DFF
- Background color: #FFFFFF
- Text color: #282828
- Logo (light): https://cdn.example.com/logo-light.svg
- Logo (dark):  https://cdn.example.com/logo-dark.svg
- Heading font: Inter
- Body font: Source Sans Pro

## Formatting Rules
- Heading style: sentence case
- Oxford comma: yes
- Readability target: 8th grade

## Quick Reference
Repeat your top 5 rules here. This section appears last —
where LLM attention is highest — to reinforce critical rules
against context-window attention drop-off.

See example/brand-guidelines.md for a complete working example.

Section aliases

## On-Brand Examples and ## Off-Brand Examples are accepted as aliases for ## On-Tone Examples / ## Off-Tone Examples. All other section names are case-insensitive exact matches.

Search path

The hook and CLI search for brand-guidelines.md in this order:

1. Current working directory
2. ~/.claude/brand-guidelines.md (user scope — enforces rules across all your projects)
3. Parent directories up to the git root

Suppressing Violations

Skip files or directories — .brand-voice-ignore

Create a .brand-voice-ignore file in your project root. Uses gitignore-style patterns:

# Auto-generated content
dist/
CHANGELOG.md

# Agent prompt files — intentional brand vocabulary exceptions
data/prompts/**

# Vendor docs
vendor/

Skip a single line — inline comment

<!-- brand-voice-disable-line -->

Add this comment anywhere on a line to suppress all violations on that line. Useful for one-off exceptions where the violation is intentional.

MCP Server

analyze_readability

Check a file or inline text for violations and readability scores.

Inputs:

Returns: { filePath, passed, violations[], readabilityScores, visualIdentity }

apply_suggestions

Apply safe word-level substitutions for forbidden/avoid terms. Does not fix sentence length, passive voice, or grade — those need human judgment.

Inputs:

Returns: diff + change list (dry run) or confirmation + change list (live)

Tip: Run dryRun: true first to preview, then apply.

CI Integration

brand-voice works independently of Claude Code — add it to any pipeline.

Check all `.md` files:

npx brand-voice@latest check

Check only files changed in the current branch:

npx brand-voice@latest check --changed-only

GitHub Actions inline annotations (PR diff comments):

npx brand-voice@latest check --reporter github-pr-review

Ratchet enforcement — block regressions without requiring a clean slate:

# Run once, commit the file
npx brand-voice@latest baseline --save

# In CI: fail only if violations increase above baseline
npx brand-voice@latest check --baseline .brand-voice-baseline.json

Example GitHub Actions workflow:

name: Brand Voice
on:
  pull_request:
    paths: ['**.md', '**.mdx']

jobs:
  prose:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with: { fetch-depth: 0 }
      - run: npx brand-voice@latest check --changed-only --reporter github-pr-review

Exit 0 = clean or within baseline. Exit 1 = errors found or baseline exceeded.

CLI Reference

brand-voice <command> [options]

Commands:
  check [file]          Check a file or all .md files in cwd
  setup                 Print instructions to run /brand-voice-setup in Claude Code
  import <file>         Normalize a brand-guidelines.md into cwd
  baseline --save       Save current violation count as ratchet baseline
  vale-sync             Check that the Vale binary is available

Check options:
  --changed-only        Only check files changed in git (requires git)
  --baseline <file>     Compare against a baseline JSON file (ratchet check)
  --reporter github-pr-review  Emit GitHub Actions annotation format

Programmatic API

import { parseGuidelines, analyzeText, loadGuidelines } from 'brand-voice';

const guidelines = loadGuidelines(process.cwd());
if (guidelines) {
  const result = analyzeText(markdownString, 'doc.md', guidelines);
  console.log(result.violations);        // Violation[]
  console.log(result.readabilityScores); // ReadabilityScores
  console.log(result.passed);            // false if any error-severity violations
}

See src/types.ts for full type definitions.

Distribution Patterns

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• `brand-guidelines.md` — created by /brand-voice-setup or written manually
• Vale — optional; only required for vale-sync

Contributing

Bug reports, feature requests, and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup instructions, key invariants to preserve, and code style guidance.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.