Brand voice

Produces a voice that ProPost's writer can imitate: role, tone, audience, niches and up to three real writing samples, set on the right channels and proven with one test draft. The samples matter most; the fields frame them.

Before you start

1. get_account: drafts left (the test uses one), autonomy.
2. list_channels: which channels will use the voice.
3. list_personas: existing voices, what they contain, channel_ids. Voice limit is 10. Prefer updating a voice over adding a near-duplicate.
4. Ask for writing samples (below) before the interview if they have any.

Workflow

1. Collect samples. Ask for 3 pieces the person wrote themselves and is proud of: past posts, an email, a newsletter paragraph, a message to a colleague. Different lengths are fine. Do not use text someone else wrote for them, or text the assistant wrote. If they have nothing, run the interview and build the voice from answers; leave writing_samples empty and say the voice will sharpen once real posts exist.
2. Interview (5 to 8 questions, one message, skippable): see the set below. Never ask what you can read from the samples.
3. Read the samples like an editor. Note: sentence length, openings, how they start posts, use of "I" and "we", humour, jargon, punctuation habits, how they end, words they never use. Write a 3-line voice profile and show it. Ask "does this sound like you?"
4. Map to fields, then show the exact values before saving:
   name: short, e.g. "Founder" or "Personal".
   role: who is speaking, with the real context, 2 to 120 characters ("Founder of a 6-person logistics software company").
   tone: exactly one of authoritative, witty, academic, conversational, inspirational. Pick the closest; the nuance lives in the samples.
   target_audience: who it is for, specific ("operations managers at mid-size retailers", not "professionals").
   niches: 1 to 12 topics they are credible on.
   writing_samples: up to 3 strings, each up to 1200 characters, verbatim and trimmed to the best passage, not paraphrased.
5. Save: create_persona for a new voice, or update_persona with persona_id and only the fields changing (note writing_samples, when sent, replaces all existing ones; update_persona overwrites, so confirm first). The default voice cannot be edited through ProPost's connector; it lives in profile settings. Create a named voice instead and point channels at it.
6. Assign: set_channel_persona with channel_id and the new persona_id (or "default"). Only drafts written afterwards use it.
7. Test with one draft. Say it uses 1 AI draft. Pick a real topic they care about, then generate_draft with a specific idea and persona_id (a single channel). Show it next to a sample and ask what is off.
8. Adjust and re-test once. Typical fixes: add a stronger sample, narrow the audience, change the tone, shorten the role. update_persona, then either generate one more draft or rewrite_post on the test (up to 3 per post) to see the effect cheaply. Stop after two rounds; more rounds usually mean the samples are the problem.
9. Leave the test as a draft. Do not schedule it unless they ask.

Interview questions

1. In one sentence, who are you professionally and what do you actually do?
2. Who should read your posts, and what do they want from you?
3. Name two people whose writing you like and one thing about each. (Style, not fame.)
4. What do you hate in other people's posts? (Often the best rule list.)
5. Are you more the one who explains, challenges, tells stories or encourages?
6. Short and punchy, or fully developed paragraphs?
7. Do you swear, joke, use emoji, use "we" for your company, write in more than one language?
8. Three topics you can talk about for an hour. Three you would never touch.

Writing guidance

Good fields are concrete; vague ones produce vague posts.

• Role: "Head of product at a fintech, ex-banker" beats "Business leader".
• Audience: "first-time founders choosing a payments provider" beats "entrepreneurs".
• Niches are topics, not adjectives: "pricing for B2B SaaS", "hiring first engineers".
• A sample earns its place when it shows a habit the writer repeats: a dry aside, a one-line paragraph, a number in the first line. Pick samples that differ in topic but share a rhythm.
• One voice per distinct way of speaking. A formal company-page voice and a chatty personal voice are two voices; do not blend them.

Voice profile example (step 3):

Short sentences, first line is usually a number or a blunt claim. Dry humour, never exclamation marks. Says "we" for the team and "I" for mistakes. Ends on a plain instruction, not a question.

Guardrails

• Samples must be the person's own words. Never write a sample for them or edit one beyond trimming; never put another person's text in as theirs.
• Don't invent biography in role: no titles, employers or years they did not state.
• Don't overwrite a voice (update_persona) without showing the before and after.
• Don't spend more than the one test draft without asking.
• Never publish_now the test.

If something fails

• persona_limit: ten voices exist; update or reuse one.
• quota_exceeded: skip generate_draft; write a short test post yourself in the voice, create_draft it, and ask whether it sounds right.
• channel_not_found / post_not_found: re-read list_channels or list_posts; never guess ids.
• autonomy_limit: voice tools work at every level, so this should not occur here; recheck get_account.
• Anything else: see ../CONVENTIONS.md.