What the Brand Book is and how Serpio uses it

Most brand guidelines live in a PDF nobody opens at 11pm when an article is due. The Brand Book is Serpio's answer: one structured document per site, written from the analysis Serpio already ran, that the writer and the image model both read every time they work. You open it from Brand Book in the sidebar.

Why one system for articles and images

An article and its hero image are produced by two different models. Left alone they drift apart: the copy sounds like you, the image looks like stock. The Brand Book gives both the same source. Chapters 01 and 02 brief the writer on audience, positioning and tone. Chapters 03 to 06 brief the image model on style, palette, type and composition. Because both read from one place, a change to the book changes both outputs from the next article onwards.

The six chapters

Every chapter is a set of plain fields. The model fills them in once; you can edit any of them afterwards.

Two chapters are partly measured rather than written. When the site analysis detected colours and font families in your live site's CSS, those exact values are written into 04 Color and 05 Type and take precedence over anything the model proposed. The hints under the font fields read Detected on website for that reason. If nothing usable was detected, the model's suggestion stands and you can correct it by hand.

The lifecycle

A Brand Book moves through three states, shown as a stepper at the top of the page: Brief, Generating, Ready. A fourth state, failed, appears as a red marker on the second step.

Brief

No book exists yet. You see the brief form and a preview of your cover built from the logo and description Serpio already holds. See Writing the brand brief.

Generating

One request is in flight. The server writes all six chapters in a single model call, so the screen shows an elapsed clock, not a percentage.

Ready

The cover, the six chapters and the side rail are on screen, and every field autosaves. See Editing and regenerating your Brand Book.

Failed

The call did not return usable chapters. Your brief is kept and the button reads Try again.

Who can use it

The Brand Book is a paid feature. On the Free plan the page shows a locked preview built from your own site: a Paid feature badge with the words Starter and Pro beside it, your brand name and description, the list of six chapters, and an Upgrade to use Brand Book button that leads to Billing. The server enforces the same rule and answers Free accounts with the message "Brand Book is available on paid plans only."

How it is used at write time

When you generate an article, Serpio looks up the site's Brand Book. If the book is ready, two bundles are extracted from it.

• Article guidance: brand name, audience, product summary, positioning, voice cues, tone summary, messaging dos and don'ts, CTA style, and your Must avoid list. These join the brand voice settings in the writer's prompt.
• Image guidance: the Machine guidance tokens (style, palette, composition, negative) and the Prompt base. A copy is frozen onto the article and used when its hero image is generated.

Every article records which revision of the book it used. In the article workspace you see a Brand Book applied badge; hover it for "Generated with Brand Book revision N" and the date. Articles written before the book existed carry no badge and are not rewritten later.

What it is not

• Not a re-crawl. Generating or regenerating reads the analysis already stored for the site. To fetch the site again, use Re-analyze in workspace settings, then regenerate.
• Not a design tool. It does not draw a logo, export a style sheet or produce files. It is a brief that Serpio's own writer and image model follow.
• Not the place for hard bans. Forbidden topics in brand voice settings are blocked server-side. Must avoid in the book is guidance for tone and imagery, not a filter.
• Not retroactive. Changing the book affects articles generated from then on. Existing drafts and published posts keep the guidance they were written with.