Brand Review Content

Brand Review (Content)

Quality gate between drafting and posting. Optimized for indie-hacker / build-in-public content where authenticity is the moat. Adapted from Anthropic's marketing/brand-review skill, stripped of corporate-compliance framing.

When to Use

• User pastes a draft and asks "is this good", "review this", "any feedback"
• Output of draft-post needs a second pass before shipping
• User wants to audit existing posts to catch voice drift over time

When NOT to Use

• Initial drafting → use draft-post
• Reply to someone else's post → use reply-research
• Documenting brand voice from scratch → see the "Brand Voice Documentation" section below, then save the result somewhere persistent (skill, memory, or vault note)

Inputs

1. Content to review — paste, file path, or URL. Accept multiple pieces for batch review.
2. Channel context — X, LinkedIn, blog, etc. Standards shift by channel.
3. Brand voice source — if user has documented voice (in this skill's reference files, memory, or vault), apply it. Otherwise use the defaults below and offer to document afterward.

Review Dimensions

1. AI-ism Detection (the highest-severity check for indie content)

Flag any of these as HIGH severity:

Flag and propose a rewrite for every instance.

2. Specificity Check

For build-in-public content specifically:

• Are there real numbers? ("47 users" beats "some users")
• Are products/tools named? ("Hermes on a Hetzner CX22" beats "my server")
• Are failures named? Or only wins? (Failure stories drive 2-3x engagement)
• Is there a real trigger event? (What happened today, not "thoughts on X")

Flag vague claims as MEDIUM. Push the writer toward specifics.

3. Voice Consistency

If brand voice is documented (see Documentation Framework below), compare each section against:

• Defined voice attributes (e.g. "warm, dry, technical")
• Tone calibration for the channel (X is punchier than LinkedIn)
• Preferred vs avoided terms
• POV consistency (don't drift between "I" and "we")

If voice is undocumented, evaluate against generic indie-hacker defaults:

• First-person consistent
• Past tense for stories, present tense for live updates
• No marketing-speak
• Honest about scope and impact

4. Structural Hygiene

• Hook — does the first 8 words earn the click?
• One idea — single tweet should have one point, not three
• Threads — does each tweet stand alone? Is the structure (setup → body → reversal → CTA) intact?
• CTAs — only present if real. No manufactured "DM me" lines.
• Length — tight is better. Cut filler ruthlessly.

5. Authenticity Flags

Always check:

• Manufactured stakes — "This changed everything" when it didn't
• Borrowed authority — claims that imply expertise the writer doesn't have
• Fake humility — "I'm just a humble builder" patterns
• Inflated metrics — rounding, vanity numbers, cherry-picked timeframes
• Stolen frames — phrasing that's clearly lifted from another big account

6. Hard No's (rarely needed but worth checking)

• Unsubstantiated comparative claims about real competitors
• Health/financial/legal claims without grounding
• Quotes attributed without permission
• Content that punches down

Output Format

## Brand Review: [Content type]

### Summary
- **Verdict:** [Ship / Ship after small fixes / Rework needed]
- **Strengths (1-2 lines):** [what's working]
- **Main issues (1-2 lines):** [headline problems]

### Findings

| # | Issue | Location | Severity | Fix |
|---|-------|----------|----------|-----|
| 1 | [issue] | [quote or section] | High/Med/Low | [specific rewrite] |

### Revised Sections (top 3-5 high-severity)

**Before:**
> [original quote]

**After:**
> [proposed rewrite]

**Why:** [1 line]

### Open Questions
[anything you need from the user to refine further]

After Review

Offer one clear next step. Don't list a menu:

• If verdict is "Ship after small fixes" → "Want me to apply the highlighted fixes and give you the final version?"
• If verdict is "Rework needed" → "The hook needs to change before anything else lands. Want me to redraft from the hook down?"
• If verdict is "Ship" → "Looks good. Want me to post via xurl or hand it back to you?"

Brand Voice Documentation Framework

When the user wants to define their voice (often after a few reviews), use the template at references/brand-voice-template.md. It has pre-built tables for each section — the user fills it in, the skill references it on every review.

Minimum useful structure (see template for full detail):

1. Personality — describe the brand as a person (1 paragraph)
2. Voice attributes — 3-5 attributes, each with:
   • "We are: [what this means in practice]"
   • "We are not: [common misinterpretation]"
   • "This sounds like: [example]"
   • "This does NOT sound like: [example]"
3. Tone calibration — how voice shifts across X / LinkedIn / blog / email
4. Preferred terms / avoided terms — concrete list
5. POV rules — first person? "I" or "we"?

Voice Attribute Spectrums (for picking attributes)

Indie-hacker defaults usually land: casual, peer-level, direct, technical-but-accessible, calm, dry-humor.

Pitfalls

1. Don't be precious about the user's draft. If something is mid, say so. Flattery hurts the writer.

2. Don't auto-rewrite without permission. Flag issues, propose fixes, let the user decide. Their voice > your suggestion.

3. Don't over-flag on Low-severity issues. If a post is 95% good, lead with that and surface only the High/Medium issues. Drowning the user in nitpicks is its own failure mode.

4. Calibrate severity to channel. A "leverage" in a LinkedIn post is Medium. In a build-in-public tweet, it's High — different audiences tolerate different things.

5. Don't review your own drafts. If draft-post produced the content in the same session, the writer's-block bias applies. Ask the user to read it first OR explicitly note "self-review, treat skeptically."

6. Voice drift is real. If the user has documented voice, compare to it directly. If they've been posting for 6+ months, the voice has probably evolved — offer to re-document after 5+ reviews.

Related Skills

• draft-post — drafting layer (the thing this skill reviews)
• build-in-public — strategy layer (cadence, X Premium, infra)
• reply-research — replies are a different beast; this skill is for original content