Choose the right copy skill
Route a copy task to copy direction, tone of voice, content design, or product microcopy without duplicating work.
Use this when: you have a copy task and need to know whether to invoke copy-direction, tone-of-voice, content-design, or ux-writing.
Prerequisites: experience-design pack and product-engineering pack installed.
Result: one clear skill invocation for your copy task, with no wasted round-trips.
Decision table
Section titled “Decision table”| Task | Skill | Pack |
|---|---|---|
| Name the brand-level copy register — cross-surface voice personality all per-surface copy references | tone-of-voice | 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) | copy-direction | experience-design |
| Decide what a surface should say, for whom, in what form, and to what objective — before any wireframe starts | content-design | experience-design |
| Write product UI copy strings — error messages, empty states, button labels, form labels | ux-writing | product-engineering |
Onboarding tri-point
Section titled “Onboarding tri-point”Onboarding tasks split across three skills by sub-task:
| Onboarding sub-task | Skill |
|---|---|
| Narrative arc and content structure of the onboarding flow | content-design |
| Copy voice and register for onboarding (what tone the copy should have) | copy-direction |
| UI-state strings within onboarding screens (loading, error, empty) | ux-writing |
Chain order
Section titled “Chain order”When you need all three layers for an acquisition surface, run them in this order:
content-design— decide what the surface must say and to whomtone-of-voice(optional, if no brand-register doc exists yet) — name the brand-level copy registercopy-direction— name the per-surface copy goals, grounded in the content brief and the brand registerux-writing— write the UI-state strings the surface renders
copy-direction references the content-design output as a structured upstream and the tone-of-voice brand-register doc as a brand referent. Neither is required — copy-direction degrades gracefully when either is absent.
When to skip directly to copy-direction
Section titled “When to skip directly to copy-direction”If a brand-register doc already exists, skip tone-of-voice and go directly to copy-direction. The brand register is a once-per-brand artifact; running tone-of-voice again would amend it, not create a new one.
Common wrong turns
Section titled “Common wrong turns”| Situation | Wrong call | Right call |
|---|---|---|
| “Name the copy vibe for our pricing page” | tone-of-voice | copy-direction (per-surface) |
| “Write the hero headline” | copy-direction | Neither — both produce direction, not finished copy. Use copy-direction to name the goals, then write the copy yourself against those goals. |
| “What should our onboarding copy sound like?” | ux-writing | copy-direction (copy voice) |
| “Write the error message for failed login” | copy-direction | ux-writing (UI copy state) |
| “What should our brand sound like across all channels?” | copy-direction | tone-of-voice (brand-level) |