# GUIDE — Voice **Status:** law — v1, 2026-08-17 **Applies to:** every surface that produces words — marketing, email, decks, documents, one-pagers, the app, the MCP harness **Parent:** [`GUIDE.interface-principles.md`](GUIDE.interface-principles.md) **Vocabulary canon:** [`../_vocab/_VOCAB.md`](../_vocab/_VOCAB.md) **Copy sources this describes:** [`../copy/`](../copy/) `_VOCAB.md` locks *which words*. [`GUIDE.states-and-language.md`](GUIDE.states-and-language.md) governs the words *inside a UI state*. Neither says how Relay sounds when it has a paragraph to work with — a landing page, a drip email, a deck, a one-pager. That gap is what this file closes, and it is the layer `_VOCAB.md`'s own session log has carried as pending Sessions 3 (Comms & Email) and 4 (Brand & Marketing) since June. **This is descriptive, not aspirational.** Every rule below is pulled from copy already shipped in `copy/`, `marketing/`, and `email/`. Where the estate is inconsistent, the majority pattern won and the outlier is named at the bottom. --- ## The voice in one line > **Relay states a mechanism and stops.** It does not sell the outcome, and it never claims more > than the pipe actually does. We are talking to someone competent who is busy and has been marketed at all week. The persuasion is that the thing is *described accurately* — every sentence that reaches for more than the product does costs credibility we don't get back. --- ## The signature move — the two-beat Relay's headline voice is a **symmetrical pair where the second beat turns the first.** It is the single most consistent property across every surface, and it is the thing to preserve: | | | |---|---| | Load what you need. | Share what you've made. | | The session ends. | The context shouldn't. | | Context in. | Context out. | | Four steps. | That's the whole loop. | | One block. | Any client. | | Start free. | Scale with your team. | The turn is doing real work — it is a reversal (*ends → shouldn't*), a completion (*in → out*), or a scope jump (*one → any*). A pair whose halves merely repeat each other is the failure: *"Move your context. Move your work."* is the shape without the move. **Budget: one two-beat per surface.** It is a headline device. In body copy it becomes a tic. ### Where a single beat is right instead Section heads and step headlines run as one plain clause, verb-first where possible: *Built for the way work actually moves.* · *Context that doesn't drift.* · *Briefs that actually land.* · *Give your context a home.* · *Hand the session forward.* · *Make it yours.* --- ## The six moves 1. **Name the mechanism, not the benefit.** *"One config block in Claude Desktop or any MCP-compatible client. Takes under a minute."* — not "effortless setup". The mechanism **is** the benefit for this audience; stating it twice reads as not trusting them. 2. **Define by exclusion.** *X, not Y.* — *"The transfer captures the substance of where you are, not just a summary."* · *"Context is stored so it can move."* · *"Not a support queue."* This is the house sentence across the whole estate, and it is how Relay fences a term off from the thing it gets confused with. 3. **Concede the limit in the same breath as the claim.** *"No trail retained after receipt on the free tier. Paid plans add end-to-end encryption."* Stating the boundary is what makes the claim land. Copy that only ever adds reads as a brochure. 4. **Let the problem be quiet.** Relay's problem statement is loss you don't notice: *"that loss compounds — quietly, invisibly — across every team running it."* Never escalate to crisis register. The wall is *invisible*, not catastrophic. 5. **Second person, present tense, active.** *"You get a Code."* · *"Drop it in a task."* · *"Work resumes exactly where you left off."* Passive construction is where overclaim hides. 6. **End on the next action, not on a feeling.** Close with the step: *"the next step is a short conversation."* · `Join Relay →`. Never close on an adjective. --- ## Register by surface Same voice throughout. What changes is how much of it there is. | Surface | Register | Length | Notes | |---------|----------|--------|-------| | **Product UI** | Plain, unhurried, no personality | 2 sentences + action | Governed in detail by [`GUIDE.states-and-language.md`](GUIDE.states-and-language.md) | | **Marketing** | The two-beat lives here. Mechanism-forward | Headline + 1–2 sentence sub | One display moment per view, matching the type rule | | **Email** | Most direct of all. One job per email | Subject + ≤ 3 sentences + one CTA | Onboarding drip is instructional, not promotional — *"That's the whole first step"* | | **Deck / document** | Expository, argued, allowed to be longer | A claim per slide | Still no adjectives doing an argument's work — see [`GUIDE.presentations.md`](GUIDE.presentations.md) | | **Agent-facing (MCP)** | Mechanical and unambiguous. No persuasion at all | As short as correctness allows | Two readers, one string — see [`GUIDE.harness-surface.md`](GUIDE.harness-surface.md). `claim` and `handoff` are opposite directions and must never be described as one another | --- ## Never | Never | Why | |-------|-----| | **seamless · AI-powered · effortless · powerful · revolutionary** | Retired outright in `_VOCAB.md`. Hype language, and the first tell that a sentence has no mechanism in it | | **Exclamation marks in system messages · emoji in product copy · apology theatre** | Already law in `GUIDE.states-and-language.md`; it holds on every surface | | **"Click here" · "Learn more" · "Find out more"** | CTAs carry the verb: `relay it →`, `Join Relay →`, `Get access →` | | **enterprises · companies · clients** | Say **orgs, teams, operators**. Wrong direction for who actually adopts this | | **memory · remembers your context · context vault · memory store** | Wrong category. Relay stores context *so it can move* — intentionally, on demand. It is not a memory product | | **context platform** | Retired → **context layer** | | **beta · early access program** | The program is **the Loop**. On buttons the CTA stays `Join Relay →` — the Loop is the reward revealed after the action, never the ask | | **A length on a Code** | Not "your 6-digit Code". The server owns the number, it has already changed once, and both lengths stay live | | **Sentences whose subject is Relay being impressive** | "Relay is the powerful layer that transforms how teams work" — no mechanism, no reader, no claim that can be checked | --- ## The three overclaim traps, specific to Relay These are the ones that look like good copy and are wrong on the product. Each traces to a rule already in `_VOCAB.md`; they are collected here because they are *voice* failures, not vocabulary failures — the words are all legal and the sentence still lies. 1. **A Code does not confer value.** All packaged context is valuable; a Code only means it has been wrapped for transport. Never write *"important enough to share"*, *"elevated"*, *"promoted"*, or anything that reads as coded = real and uncoded = draft. **The wrapper is not the gift.** Absence of a Code is a normal state and is never written as missing, pending, or an error. 2. **The Code is the seal, not the package.** *"The Code seals the package for transport; it is not what makes the context valuable."* Copy that makes the Code the hero is selling the envelope. Relay is the pipe, and the mechanism is the point. 3. **Continuity is deliberate, not passive.** *"The continuity isn't passive accumulation — it's deliberate handoff, on demand."* Anything that implies Relay quietly watches, retains, or remembers is both off-message and wrong about the product. --- ## Known drift — burn-down, not law Named so it isn't re-derived, and so no one treats a legacy file as a voice model: - **`copy/relay-one-pager-copy.md`** (June 2026, pre-Session-0) is the biggest outlier in the estate: "context platform" (retired → context layer), "Little Rocket Ltd." (retired → Relay Context Inc.), "private beta" (retired → the Loop), and a `littlerocket.io` contact address. Its *voice* is on-model — the problem statement there is the best writing we have. Its **vocabulary is a snapshot of the old canon.** Reuse the prose, not the nouns. - **`copy/relay-web-copy.md`** carries the retired "Relay Code" in the hero UI demo and "Pulse" as a feature name. Both retired. These sit in `scripts/vocab-baseline.txt` as pre-existing. Fixing them is a win to lock with `python3 scripts/check_vocab.py --update-baseline`, not a blocker on new work. --- ## Checklist - [ ] At most one two-beat, and its second beat genuinely turns the first - [ ] Every claim names a mechanism a reader could check - [ ] Any limit or gate stated alongside the claim it qualifies, not buried - [ ] Second person, present tense, active voice - [ ] Closes on an action, not an adjective - [ ] No word from the **Never** table - [ ] None of the three overclaim traps - [ ] Vocabulary checked against `_VOCAB.md` — `python3 scripts/check_vocab.py` exits 0 - [ ] Register matches the surface --- ## Framework note The two-beat, the overclaim traps, and the Loop naming are **Relay's alone**. The six moves, the register-by-surface table, and the mechanism-over-benefit rule are `framework-candidate` for Launchpad — they are how any technical product with a competent audience should sound, and nothing in them depends on Relay.