Brand Playbook

Your Brand Playbook is the strategic voice and language rulebook for your brand. It defines what your content should sound like — the words to avoid, the tone, the formatting rules, and the metaphors that are on- or off-brand. The Brand check on every article you generate flags content against these rules, so the playbook is what makes that check meaningful and specific to you.

You'll find it at Settings → Brand & Identity → Brand Playbook (/core/settings/brand/?tab=playbook).

Where the Playbook Comes From

The playbook is generated automatically from your brand discovery — the research ILLIXIS runs when you set up your brand and approve your brand strategy. You don't have to write it from scratch. If you haven't completed brand discovery yet, the tab will tell you the playbook hasn't been generated yet; it appears once discovery finishes.

What You Can Edit

These rules drive the Brand check on your articles, and you control them directly:

• Identity — your category (what the brand is), tagline (what it feels like), and promise (what it delivers).
• Voice rules — tone words to use, tone words to avoid, perspective hierarchy, sentence style, and structural rules (e.g. "no em-dashes", "no exclamation marks"). Each structural rule becomes a formatting flag on your articles.
• Language rules — your "words to never use" list (each one becomes a "word to avoid" flag), a subject rule, and what to anchor / never anchor against.
• Phrases to avoid — add or remove rows, each with the reason and a suggested replacement. When the Brand check flags one of these on an article, it shows your suggested replacement.
• Forbidden metaphors — add or remove rows, each with a reason.

Use Add phrase / Add metaphor to add a row, and the × button to remove one. Click Save Brand Settings when you're done.

What's Display-Only

The strategic context generated from discovery — key arguments, audience segments, phrases to use, pain points, and approved metaphors — is shown for reference but isn't editable here. To change those, update your brand positioning and regenerate (below).

Your Edits Are Protected

Once you edit the playbook, it's marked as yours. Future automatic discovery runs will not overwrite your edits — the rules you set are the rules the Brand check uses.

If you ever want to rebuild the playbook from your current brand discovery, use the Regenerate from discovery button. This runs in the background (about a minute) and you'll get a notification when it's done. Note that regenerating overwrites your edits — you'll see a confirmation warning before it runs.

Tips

• If an article's Brand check flags something that looks wrong, fix the rule here rather than ignoring the flag — the check only reflects what's in your playbook.
• Adding a suggested replacement to a "phrase to avoid" makes the flag more actionable: the article view shows your replacement right next to the flagged phrase.
• Regenerate from discovery after you've meaningfully changed your brand positioning, so the playbook reflects the new direction — then re-apply any custom rules you want to keep.