Choose the right copy mode

Use this when: you have a copy task and need to know which content-design mode it belongs to, or whether it belongs to ux-writing instead. Prerequisites: experience-design pack and product-engineering pack installed. Result: one clear invocation for your copy task, with no wasted round-trips.

Note

How-to — task-oriented. Picks the right copy mode for your situation.

The copy layer is one skill, content-design, with three modes. You do not choose between skills; you choose a mode, and content-design selects it from your request. The one real boundary is with ux-writing, which lives in this pack and owns the strings a user reads in the product interface.

Decision table

Task	Where it goes	Pack
Decide what a surface should say, for whom, in what form, and to what objective — before any wireframe starts	content-design → message and narrative structure	experience-design
Name the copy goals and arbitration rules for a specific marketing or acquisition surface (pricing page, campaign landing page, product launch page, onboarding flow copy voice)	content-design → per-surface acquisition copy goals	experience-design
Name the brand-level copy register — cross-surface voice personality all per-surface copy references	content-design → brand-level register	experience-design
Write product UI copy strings — error messages, empty states, button labels, form labels	ux-writing	experience-design

Each mode still writes its own artifact, at its own path. Folding the three registrations into one skill did not merge their outputs.

Mode	Artifact
message and narrative structure	<output_dir>/content/<slug>.md
per-surface acquisition copy goals	<output_dir>/copy/<surface-slug>.md
brand-level register	<output_dir>/copy/brand-register.md

Only the first mode is required in the design thread. The others run when you need them:

Skill	Needs	What it produces	Needed?
content-design	The surface and its audience	A content brief: what the surface says, to whom, in what form.	Required
content-design (brand-level register)	Voice-of-customer evidence, if you have it	The cross-surface voice all per-surface copy decisions reference.	Optional
content-design (per-surface copy goals)	The content brief; the brand register if it exists	Ranked copy goals and arbitration rules for one marketing surface.	Optional

Onboarding tri-point

Onboarding tasks split three ways by sub-task — two of them inside one skill:

Onboarding sub-task	Where it goes
Narrative arc and content structure of the onboarding flow	content-design → message and narrative structure
Copy voice and register for onboarding (what tone the copy should have)	content-design → per-surface acquisition copy goals
UI-state strings within onboarding screens (loading, error, empty)	ux-writing

Chain order

When you need every layer for an acquisition surface, run them in this order:

1. content-design, message and narrative structure — decide what the surface must say and to whom
2. content-design, brand-level register — optional, if no brand-register document exists yet
3. content-design, per-surface acquisition copy goals — grounded in the content brief and the brand register
4. ux-writing — write the UI-state strings the surface renders

The per-surface mode reads the content brief as a structured upstream and the brand register as a brand referent. Neither is required; the mode degrades gracefully when either is absent.

When to skip the brand register

If a brand-register document already exists, skip step 2 and go straight to the per-surface mode. The brand register is a once-per-brand artifact: running the brand-level register mode again amends it rather than creating a second one. Asking for a per-surface record under the reserved brand-register slug is refused, not repaired — the skill asks you for a different surface slug.

Common wrong turns

Situation	Wrong call	Right call
“Name the copy vibe for our pricing page”	brand-level register	per-surface acquisition copy goals
“Write the hero headline”	per-surface acquisition copy goals	Neither — every mode produces direction, not finished copy. Name the goals, then write the copy yourself against them.
“What should our onboarding copy sound like?”	ux-writing	per-surface acquisition copy goals
“Write the error message for failed login”	per-surface acquisition copy goals	ux-writing (UI copy state)
“What should our brand sound like across all channels?”	per-surface acquisition copy goals	brand-level register