Copywriting

copywriting — copy is design

Stage: Phase 8 — Voice (consulted during every Phase 6 section build) - Reads: design/BRIEF.md (tone words, audience, offer), design/DIRECTION.md (archetype), design/SITEMAP.md part 2 (density budgets) - Writes: §Voice appended to design/DIRECTION.md + every string in components

Standard

Every string is written for THIS brief in a defined voice. Headlines survive the swap test: paste one onto a competitor's site — if it still works, it says nothing and fails. Microcopy gets the same care as heroes; alt text and aria-labels are copy too. A string that could have been generated without reading the brief is a defect, not a draft. Body copy is scannable, not a wall: readers scan in an F-pattern and rarely pass a paragraph's first two sentences, so front-load the point and break three-plus supporting clauses into a list rather than a subordinate-clause pile-up — the ≤45-word body limit below is the ceiling, not the target (long-form technical prose is exempt).

Voice definition (always first)

1. Take the 3 tone words from design/BRIEF.md and score them onto the Voice Matrix — four orthogonal 1–5 sliders: Formal↔Casual, Serious↔Playful, Plain↔Expressive, Reserved↔Bold. Then write one "sounds like" and one "never sounds like" sentence pair per tone word — six sentences total. The four numbers are the drift detector: every later string batch (hero, nav, footer, errors) gets a one-line check against them, so a witty hero can't sit beside a corporate-flat footer undetected.
2. German register (de-DE — decide before any German string): the Formal↔Casual slider made grammatical. Record Sie or Du plus a one-line brand rationale in design/BRIEF.md, then hold it across nav, forms, errors, confirmations, and transactional email. Sie for B2B, regulated, or trust-coded builds (Ledger & Lane; the Deutsche Bahn / Sparkasse convention); Du for D2C, playful, or modern ones (Loop & Thread, Framewalk; N26's deliberate break from bank convention). gate-content flags any mixed-register string the way it flags dead copy.
3. Fix 5 mechanics: person (we/you/it), contraction policy, sentence-length ceiling in words, jargon policy (which domain terms are in, which are out), humor policy (none / dry / warm — never wacky).
4. Write 3 calibration strings — one hero headline, one button, one error message — and check each against every pair from step 1 and the matrix scores. These are the tuning fork for every later string.
5. Append the result as ## Voice to design/DIRECTION.md. Phase 6 agents draft against it; Phase 8 rewrites in it.

Headline formulas (rotate — no two adjacent sections share one)

Formula	Shape	Example
Plain claim	concrete outcome, declarative	"Your books, closed in three days."
Named enemy	attack the pain, not praise the product	"Spreadsheets were never meant to run payroll."
Specific number	a real figure carries the line	"14 grams. 40 hours. Zero cables."
Category reframe	deny the expected category	"Not a CRM. A memory."
Reader mid-action	second person, already in the scene	"You hit publish. We handle the rest."
Verb-first	imperative with a concrete verb	"Ship the update. Skip the meeting."

Rules: every headline contains ≥1 concrete noun; abstract -ify/-ize verbs (simplify, optimize, revolutionize) never carry the sentence; run the swap test on every H1 and H2.

Length limits (hard)

String	Limit
Hero H1	≤8 words
Hero subhead	≤20 words, one sentence
Section H2	≤8 words
Body paragraph	≤3 sentences, ≤45 words
Button / CTA	≤3 words
Nav label	1–2 words
Testimonial pull quote	≤30 words
Error message	≤2 sentences
Meta title	≤60 chars; meta description 140–160 chars
Kinetic-reveal beat (only if a reveal is selected)	≤6–8 words; German ≤5–6

Density budgets in design/SITEMAP.md part 2 override these downward, never upward. When a kinetic-type reveal is on, split any line longer than one beat into multiple reveal beats with pauses (40–80ms stagger) — never shrink the font to fit; the prefers-reduced-motion fallback shows the full string at once.

Banned phrases (taste list, expanded — grep for every one)

From taste, absolute: "Welcome to", "Elevate your", "Unlock the power of", "Seamlessly", "Empower". Expanded, same status: "Supercharge", "Revolutionize", "Streamline your", "Effortlessly", "Take your ... to the next level", "All-in-one platform", "Built for the modern", "Blazingly fast", "Game-changer", "Cutting-edge", "Next-generation", "Best-in-class", "World-class", "Say goodbye to", "Say hello to", "In today's fast-paced world", "We've got you covered", "Look no further", "Unleash", "Leverage" as a verb, "your journey", "It's that simple", "Made simple", "Discover the difference", "robust" and "innovative" as praise, "solutions" unattached to a named problem. No emoji in production copy (✨🚀🎉 — taste ban). Max 1 exclamation point per page; 0 in error messages.

Microcopy standards

• Buttons: ≤3 words, verb-first, name the outcome — "Start free trial", "See pricing", "Book a call". Banned as defaults: "Submit", "Click here", "Learn more" (try a specific label first: "Read case study").
• Errors: what happened + how to fix, in that order, in the voice — "Card declined. Check the number or try another card." Never "Oops!", never "Something went wrong" without a next step, never blame ("You entered an invalid email" → "That email is missing an @").
• Empty states: state + action — "No projects yet. Create your first." Never a bare "No data".
• Success: confirm the specific thing — "Message sent — we reply within one business day." Not "Success!".
• Form labels and hints: labels are nouns, always visible (forms owns the layout); hints state the format before the error can happen ("8+ characters"), and validation errors follow the error rule above.
• Loading: name the work when it exceeds ~1s ("Generating preview…"); below that, the spinner speaks alone.

Process

1. Define the voice (above) if ## Voice is not yet in DIRECTION.md.
2. Inventory every string: grep components for JSX text, aria-label, alt, metadata objects, and server-action error returns. Nothing user-visible escapes the inventory.
3. Rewrite headlines first, in page order. Then read every H1→H2 aloud as a sequence — it must argue the page's conversion goal on its own (gate-content checks exactly this).
4. Rewrite microcopy: every button, error, empty, success, hint, and loading string against the standards above.
5. Sweep: grep the codebase for each banned phrase; fix all hits. Verify the hard limits on hero H1, H2s, and buttons by counting.
6. Read each full page aloud once. Any string you stumble on, rewrite shorter.

Anti-patterns

• "Welcome to [Product]" as a hero — announces nothing (grep: "Welcome to")
• A headline that is the company's mission statement instead of the reader's outcome
• "Learn more" four times on one page (grep: "Learn more")
• "Submit" on any form (grep: ">Submit<")
• "Oops" or "Something went wrong" with no recovery path (grep: "Oops", "went wrong")
• Title Case On Every Headline Word — default to sentence case; if DIRECTION.md decides otherwise, keep it consistent site-wide
• Lorem ipsum or draft markers surviving into Phase 8 (grep: "lorem", "ipsum", "TBD")
• Body copy that re-explains the headline directly above it — say it once
• A marketing paragraph that buries its point in a subordinate-clause pile-up — lead with the conclusion, list the rest
• Mixed German register — Sie in checkout, Du in a toast confirmation (decide once in BRIEF.md, hold everywhere)
• A kinetic-reveal line too long to read before the stagger finishes — split into beats, never shrink the font
• Alt text like "image" or "photo" — describe what the image argues, or mark it decorative

Worked example — Kaffeewerk Ost, roastery shop voice + hero copy

• Input read — BRIEF.md tone words: "sensory, direct, unhurried"; DIRECTION.md archetype: "Warm Organic/Humanist — craft, tactile, no marketing fluff."
• Voice Matrix from those tone words: Formal↔Casual 4, Serious↔Playful 2, Plain↔Expressive 3, Reserved↔Bold 3 — the casual-4 score sets the de-DE register to Du, logged in BRIEF.md ("a Berlin roaster talks to regulars, not account holders").
• §Voice appended to DIRECTION.md: person "wir/du" (informal German); sentence ceiling 16 words; jargon IN: washed, natural, Röstprofil — OUT: "premium", "artisanal"; humor dry, never wacky.
• Calibration hero H1 (Specific-number formula, 6 words): "Röstung No. 14. Frisch aus Berlin."
• Subhead (11 words, one sentence): "Washed Yirgacheffe: Apricot, black tea, honey — dienstags geröstet, mittwochs bei dir."
• CTAs: /shop primary "Bohnen ansehen"; /abo "Abo starten" — verb-first, ≤3 words, never "Jetzt sichern".
• Sold-out empty state: "Ausverkauft — nächste Röstung Freitag." Order-confirm success: "Bestellung No. 4471 — geröstet und unterwegs zu dir."
• Rejected H1: "Frisch gerösteter Kaffee für Genießer" — trips no banned phrase, but it fits any German roaster alive and fails the swap test; only "Röstung No. 14" names something Kaffeewerk alone can write.
• Handoff: §Voice lands in design/DIRECTION.md; ultraweb:hero pulls the H1/subhead, ultraweb:pricing draws the /abo tier copy, and ultraweb:email drops the confirm string into the Resend order mail.

Composes with

• ultraweb:brief — source of the tone words, audience, and offer the voice is built from
• ultraweb:direction — the voice must serve the archetype; §Voice lives in its file
• ultraweb:wireframe — its per-section density budgets are this skill's copy ceilings
• ultraweb:ui-states — the error/empty/success standards here fill the states it designs
• ultraweb:seo — meta titles and descriptions are written here, in the voice, within the char limits
• ultraweb:gate-content — the empirical check that bans held and headlines tell the story; for de-DE it also flags Sie/Du register drift across pages
• ultraweb:motion-language / ultraweb:scroll-motion — when a kinetic-type reveal is selected there, copy caps at 6–8 words per beat and the prefers-reduced-motion fallback shows the full string
• Consumed by every component-tier skill (hero, pricing, buttons, feature-sections, forms, social-proof, faq, footer) — they draft strings against §Voice rather than writing their own
• ultraweb:i18n — every string written here is what i18n externalizes into per-locale message catalogs; the voice — including the Sie/Du register decision — must survive translation intact
• ultraweb:gate-antislop — runs the banned-phrase grep this skill sweeps for; a dead-copy phrase that ships is its gate failure, not a style call