# Recipe: brand voice check, against your rules, with citations

A copy-paste prompt: your agent checks a draft against the brand brief, vocabulary and claim rules your team keeps in onecell, and cites each rule it applies.

> [!info]
> **For:** a brand or content lead, or anyone about to send words out under the team's name. **When:** before anything goes out: a post, an email, a page, a client update. **Takes:** about a minute of agent time. **You get:** a verdict, each problem line with the rule it breaks and a rewrite, and what already works. The draft is left alone.

## The prompt

```text
Check <draft, or a link to it> against our brand in onecell before it
goes out.

1. Find the rules: search onecell for our brand brief, voice, vocabulary
   and any "do not claim" lists (in <cell> if I name one). Read them, and
   cite each rule you use as cell · heading · passage.

2. Go through the draft line by line. Flag:
   - claims about things that are not live for the reader yet
   - banned words and wrong nouns
   - breaks in voice: hype, exclamation marks, filler
   - lines that could sell a competitor just as well

3. Write "Voice check: <draft title>" in <cell> (dry run first): a
   one-line verdict, then a table of line, problem, cited rule and a
   suggested rewrite, then what already works. Don't edit the draft.

4. Reply with the verdict and the one change that matters most.
```

## What your agent does

1. Finds your team's rules
   The brief, vocabulary and claim limits your team already keeps in onecell. No generic style guide.
2. Reads the draft line by line
   Claims, words, voice, and lines that could belong to anyone.
3. Cites every rule
   Each flag points to the passage it comes from, so a writer can check it rather than argue with it.
4. Leaves the draft alone
   The check is its own document. The writer decides what to change.

## What you get

A check of a newsletter for Tally, a made-up invoicing app, against its made-up brand rules. It caught a promise the product can't keep.

<!-- onecell:block {"type":"embed","documentId":"9ed532b9-481f-48a6-bfa0-364ff378d6e1"} -->
[Sample voice check: the Tally autumn newsletter](https://onecell.io/p/sample-voice-check-autumn-newsletter)

## Variations

<details>
<summary>No brand rules yet</summary>

Ask first: “Read our five best published pieces and draft a short voice guide: what we say, what we never say, and example lines.” Review it, publish it in a marketing cell, and every later check has something to cite.

</details>

<details>
<summary>Checking a client's brand, not yours</summary>

Keep each client's brief in their cell and name it: “Check against the rules in `<client cell>` only.” The agent will not mix one client's voice into another's.

</details>

<details>
<summary>Fix it as well</summary>

Add: “Then write a corrected version below the check, changing only the flagged lines.” You still see every change against its rule.

</details>

## Tips

- The claim check matters most: a word in the wrong voice is embarrassing, a claim that isn't true is worse.
- Keep “do not claim” lists current. When a feature is fully rolled out, take it off the list.
- A rule with no citation is an opinion. Ask the agent to drop flags it cannot source.

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Part of [onecell recipes](https://onecell.io/help/recipes): copy-paste prompts for using onecell in your work.