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brand.md: the open standard for brand identity

How to use BRAND.md and DESIGN.md

Two markdown files that tell any AI tool how a brand sounds, thinks and looks. Here's the thirty-second setup, per tool — for both files.

Claude

  1. Create a Project (claude.ai → Projects → New).
  2. Drag both BRAND.md and DESIGN.md into the Project knowledge.
  3. Every chat in that Project now writes and styles on-brand, without you having to ask.

Try it: Ask: "Write a LinkedIn post about our product, and suggest three colours for a banner." Compare it with a chat that has neither file.

ChatGPT

  1. Open BRAND.md and copy the Voice section; open DESIGN.md and copy Colors + Typography.
  2. Settings → Personalization → Custom instructions.
  3. Paste both under "How would you like ChatGPT to respond?".

Try it: Ask for a product description with a colour suggestion: word choice, tone and colours should all land right away.

Cursor & coding agents

  1. Put both BRAND.md and DESIGN.md in the root of your repo, next to AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md.
  2. That's it — agents that read repo context pick up both automatically.
  3. For UI work, the agent reads DESIGN.md for colours, typography and component style.

Try it: Have the agent build a button or an error message — both the colours and the copy should come from the files, not the model's taste.

Any AI chat

  1. Open the files: together about three pages of readable markdown.
  2. Paste both above your prompt.
  3. Add: "Follow this BRAND.md and DESIGN.md for everything you write and design."

Try it: Works in any language model today, no integration needed. That's the entire point of the format.

Buzz

  1. Put BRAND.md in your Buzz agent's core-memory (Buzz injects it every turn — budget roughly 10KB).
  2. Connect Branddock's hosted MCP server to that agent — the same server Claude and ChatGPT use.
  3. Use the 'Brand Guardian' persona-pack as a starting point, or build your own with the same three MCP tools.

Try it: Paste a draft message in the channel and ask the agent: "Score this against our brand." Compare with and without BRAND.md in core-memory.

So what does DESIGN.md actually do?

Same recipe as above, different question: not how the brand sounds, but how it looks — colours with hex values, typography per role, spacing and component style.

Don't have a BRAND.md and DESIGN.md yet? Generate both from any website URL, free and without an account.

Generate your brand.md

A generated file marks each section as filled or left empty. Only a human can confirm whether what's there is correct — that's what you do in a Branddock workspace, where the files then stay current on their own. Spec: thebrand.md (v0.3, open standard).