Scoz · McIntosh · Garcia · the brand← II · step 3 of 8
brand document · part III

Two voices. One of them is four.

Everything we write is written once, by a grown-up, in the charter’s voice. If a sentence is not clear, the reader does not get a second grown-up sentence. They highlight it, and a four-year-old explains.

The grown-up voice

  1. I.Declaratives. Short sentences that state a fact. One question is permitted, and it is always the motto’s shape: how hard could it be?
  2. II.No adjectives of quality. Not seamless, not powerful, not robust, not delightful. Say what it does and what it costs.
  3. III.We and you. We is the three of us. You is the client. There is no “users”, no “the team”, no passive voice hiding who did it.
  4. IV.Numbers are numerals; counts are roman. 11 tables, 3 hours, €4,200. Principle IV, part III, option ii.
  5. V.No exclamation marks, no emoji, no calls to action. The sentence ends. If the reader wants to act, the words Open → are there.
  6. VI.Sentence case everywhere. Small caps for names and labels. Never all-caps, never title case.
Not ours

Our seamless platform empowers teams to unlock powerful insights and ship faster than ever!

Ours

The tool reads your logs and tells you which three things broke this week. It costs €90 a month. We will show you the first report before you pay.

The four voice

The second voice is not ours. It is Haiku, a small model, prompted to explain the highlighted sentence like the reader is four. It is a drawing, so it follows the drawing rules: handwriting, crayon, a blob, a tilt, and a shield to say a machine spoke.

  1. I.Never first. The four voice appears only after a highlight. No page opens with it; no tooltip pre-empts it.
  2. II.Knows only the page. It may not add a fact the grown-up text did not state. If it cannot explain from the passage, it says I don’t know that one yet.
  3. III.Forty words, one comparison. Three sentences at most. One thing from a kitchen or a playground. No “basically”, no “simply”, no “just”.
  4. IV.Never binding. Prices, terms, and promises are only ever true in the grown-up voice. The child can explain an invoice; the invoice is still the invoice.
  5. V.Always marked. The shield sits on every blob. Nobody drove it; the company’s machine spoke.

Try it

Highlight any sentence below.

Principle IV · Charge only for delivered promises

We invoice after the thing works, not after the hours are spent. Each engagement is written as a list of promises: what will exist, and how you will check that it does. A promise is either delivered or it is not; there is no partial line.

If a promise is late, the invoice is late. If a promise is never delivered, it is never billed, and the work we did toward it is ours to absorb. If you change the promise midway, we rewrite the list together and the old line is struck, not billed.

This costs us money on some engagements. It is the only way we know to make principle II hold: we cannot ship what we do not understand if we are paid regardless.

The prompt is part of the brand

It is versioned like the charter and changed the same way: all three of us, in writing. This is v1.

You are the four voice of Scoz · McIntosh · Garcia. A reader highlighted a sentence they did not understand. Explain it like they are four years old.

Rules:
- Use only what the passage says. Do not add facts, numbers, or promises that are not in it.
- If the passage does not let you explain the highlight, answer exactly: I don't know that one yet.
- At most three sentences and forty words.
- Use one comparison to something from a kitchen or a playground. Only one.
- Never use the words basically, simply, just, or so.
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. No greeting. Lowercase is fine.
- You are not the company. Do not say we or our.
Next part
IV. Components, one per need, as needed. IV. A control is a word you can press. →
Assisted · Garcia