Chapter 01 · How-to guides
How to create your Brand Book
Fill the brief, generate all six chapters in one pass, edit any field with autosave, and regenerate when your direction changes. About five minutes on any paid plan.
Updated Sep 20, 2026 · 5 min read
By the end of this you will have a six-chapter Brand Book for one site, written from the site analysis Serpio already holds and used to brief the writer and the image model on every new article. Filling the brief takes about five minutes; generation usually finishes within a couple of minutes, and the screen tells you if it runs long. You need a paid plan (Starter, Growth or Scale).
Before you start
- Be on a paid plan. On Free, Brand Book opens a locked preview with an Upgrade to use Brand Book button.
- Wait for the site's analysis to finish. Until then the sidebar item is greyed out.
- Set voice cues and forbidden topics in workspace settings first. They pre-fill the brief.
- Pick the right site in the top bar. Each site has its own book.
Steps
- 1
Open Brand Book
Click Brand Book in the sidebar. You should see a stepper reading Brief, Generating, Ready with the first step active, a form headed The brief, and two cards on the right: Your cover and Six chapters.
- 2
Pick a Starting vibe
Under Starting vibe, tap one of Editorial, Premium, Playful, Technical, Soft or Bold. Its five keywords appear as chips in the field below and the preset lights up. A second preset adds more chips rather than replacing the first.
- 3
Tidy Visual style keywords
It arrives pre-filled with your voice cues and a few target keywords. Remove chips that describe SEO targets rather than a look. Add your own with comma or Tab, or click the dashed chips under From your site and Voice cues. Up to eight are kept.
- 4
Add Reference brands
Type up to six brands you admire visually. The placeholder suggests the register: Linear, Stripe, Arc.
- 5
Fill Must avoid
Pre-filled from your forbidden topics, with a Forbidden topics suggestion row. Add aesthetics you dislike, such as cliche stock photos or jargon. Up to eight.
- 6
Write Extra notes (optional)
Anything that does not fit a chip: mood, audience nuance, no-go aesthetics. About 1,200 characters at most.
- 7
Click Generate brand book
The button reads Generating… and the screen changes to Setting your brand book with a running clock. Three stages are listed: Read the site analysis (done), Write the six chapters (active) and Ready to edit (pending). There is no percentage; the server writes all six chapters in one call.
- 8
Land on the ready view
The page swaps to a cover with your logo, name, one-liner and palette; a left rail with Contents, In use, Machine guidance and Generation brief; and the six chapters below.
- 9
Edit a field
Open 01 Brand core and change One-liner. The badge in the chapter header moves from Editing… to Saving… to Saved just now. There is no save button; chapters autosave about a second after you stop typing.
- 10
Regenerate when your direction changes
Edit Generation brief in the rail first and wait for Saved. Click Regenerate brand book on the cover and confirm with Replace and regenerate. A banner reads Rewriting the six chapters while it runs. Hand edits are lost, so copy anything you want to keep.
What happens next
From the next article you generate, the writer receives the book's audience, positioning, voice and messaging rules, and the hero image model receives the Machine guidance tokens and Prompt base. The article workspace shows a Brand Book applied badge; hover it to see which revision was used. Earlier articles are not rewritten. Colours and fonts detected in your site's CSS are re-applied after every generation.
If something looks off
- You see Paid feature and a locked preview. You are on Free; upgrade on Billing. Any paid plan unlocks it.
- The second step of the stepper turns red and the button reads Try again. Generation failed, usually transiently. Click Try again; if it fails twice, shorten Extra notes.
- The clock passes 90 seconds. A note says large sites take longer. You can leave; the page polls and updates itself when the book lands.
- The palette or fonts look wrong. Edit the swatches in 04 Color system or the font fields in 05 Typography directly. If the live site has changed, use Re-analyze in settings, then regenerate.
- A chapter shows Couldn't save. One autosave failed; a toast has the reason. Edit the field again to retry.
- Generate is refused with "A brand book already exists for this domain." Use Regenerate brand book instead.
Go deeper
- What the Brand Book is and how Serpio uses it
- Writing the brand brief for what each preset seeds.
- Editing and regenerating your Brand Book for what regeneration keeps.
- Hero images for how machine guidance reaches the image model.
- How to change workspace settings to set the voice cues that seed the brief.
Common questions
Do I need to fill the whole brief?
No. Every field can be empty. The analysis alone is enough.
Can I have more than one book per site?
No. One book per site. Regenerate rewrites it in place and bumps the revision number.
Does editing the book change my published articles?
No. Each article keeps the guidance it was written with. Only new articles use the new book.
Related guides
What the Brand Book is and how Serpio uses it
The Brand Book is a six-chapter system Serpio writes from your saved site analysis, then reuses on every article and hero image. What it holds, who can use it, and what it is not.
Read guideWriting the brand brief
The brief is the one form you fill before Serpio writes your Brand Book. Field by field: presets, suggestion rows, what belongs in Must avoid, and what the generating screen really shows.
Read guideEditing and regenerating your Brand Book
The ready layout, how autosave works chapter by chapter, the colour and type tools, what Regenerate brand book overwrites and keeps, and how machine guidance reaches hero images.
Read guide