Setting your voice: audience, cues, and forbidden topics

The voice step is the last part of guided setup. It is headed How should Serpio sound? and asks three questions. Your answers are inserted into every article prompt, so they shape every draft this site produces. This guide covers the questions, the suggestion menus, the rules, and where to edit the answers later.

The three questions

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   1. Who is this for?

   Describe the reader in one sentence. A menu on the right, titled Suggested for your-domain, lists audiences the analysis found. In workspace settings the same menu is titled Tap to use and holds three general examples, such as Indie SaaS founders who don't have time for agency content. Pick one and edit it, or type your own. This field is required.

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   2. How should it sound?

   Add cues like warm, no jargon, first-person. Type them and press comma or Tab, or open the preset menu. The ten common presets are warm, direct, no jargon, data-driven, conversational, authoritative, playful, first-person, short sentences, and technical. At least one cue is required. Each cue needs 2+ characters and at least one letter.

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   3. What should it never mention?

   Forbidden topics. The helper line reads Drafts that include these topics get rejected automatically. Presets are competitors by name, politics, speculation, pricing claims, and medical advice. The analysis may suggest cluster-specific ones instead, such as guaranteed returns for a finance site. This field is optional.

Press Save & continue. If the audience is empty or there are no cues, the step shows Add your audience and at least one voice cue. and stays put. After saving, Serpio returns you to the focus step if it still needs confirmation, otherwise you land on You're all set.

Where the suggestions come from

The Why this matters panel

On wide screens a side panel titled Why this matters explains the mechanic in one line: Serpio injects these cues into every article prompt and blocks forbidden topics server-side. It lists the three parts as Audience, who the draft speaks to, Voice cues, how it sounds, and Forbidden, what it never says. That is the whole model. There is no separate tone setting hidden elsewhere, and the TONE and STYLE selects in the Generate article dialog sit on top of this voice rather than replacing it.

The voice is also read by other parts of the product. Forbidden topics become Topics to avoid in the editorial profile that steers idea research, and they seed the must-avoid list in the Brand Book on paid plans. What the voice does not do: it does not rewrite pages already on your site, and it does not audit your existing content for tone. It only affects what Serpio writes from now on.

Optional: target audience details

Guided setup stops at the three questions. Workspace settings add a Target audience card described as optional, to help Serpio sharpen tone, examples, and references. Leave it empty and the card notes that Serpio will write to a general audience.

Geo regions

Where your readers are. Press Pick regions (or Edit regions once some are set) to choose from an allow-list of regions such as North America and South Asia, and countries such as India and United Kingdom. Free text is not allowed here so targeting stays consistent.

Age range

Pill buttons from 18–24 through 65+, plus Mixed. Pick every bracket that fits, or leave empty for any.

Gender

One choice: Any, All, Mostly male, Mostly female, Non-binary, or Mixed.

Interests

Affinity tags your readers already care about, with presets such as personal finance and cooking & recipes. Each interest needs 2+ characters and at least one letter. Anything else is dropped when saving.

Where to edit the voice later

Open Settings under the Site heading in the sidebar. The Brand voice card carries the same three questions, with the description Injected into every article prompt. Forbidden topics are blocked server-side. Under the cue and forbidden fields, a guidance box shows good examples you can tap, examples to skip, and the rule for that field. For forbidden topics the rule is to be specific, because vague values like no cannot be matched against draft copy. Press Save changes at the bottom of the page.