The Brand Kit Skill File

If you installed Pillar 1 (the Static Ads Engine), you noticed something. Every prompt referenced brand-kit.md. The Nano Banana skill called it. The static ad designer skill called it. The creative matrix called it.

That file is the foundation. It’s also the thing most people half-ass.

This week’s drop is the polished version: a proper Claude Code skill file with YAML frontmatter, an interactive build command, automatic website scraping, and the naming convention from Pillar 2 baked in. Drop it into your .claude/skills/ directory and every other skill in the Vault references it automatically.

Here’s what the proper version does that the inline Pillar 1 version doesn’t.

Auto-activation

Real Claude Code skills have YAML frontmatter that tells Claude when to activate them. The Pillar 1 version was a static markdown file you had to manually reference. This version activates anytime you mention your brand, ask for branded content, or run any of the other Vault skills. You stop typing “reference brand-kit.md” in every prompt. Claude just knows.

The /build-brand-kit interactive command

Run /build-brand-kit and Claude walks you through every field with smart defaults and validation. Hex codes get checked for accessibility contrast. Voice descriptions that read like generic AI (“we believe in quality and trust”) get flagged and rewritten. The skill won’t let you save a brand kit that’s too vague to be useful.

Auto-scrape mode

If you already have a website, you don’t have to fill any of this out manually. Run /build-brand-kit from https://yourbrand.com and Claude scrapes your site, extracts colors from your CSS, pulls your fonts, analyzes your existing copy to infer voice, and grabs your top product photos. Five minutes instead of thirty.

Naming convention enforcement

The naming convention from Pillar 2 ([brand]_[objective]_[hook]_[persona]_[style]_[version]_[date]) is baked in. Whenever any other skill creates an ad name, campaign name, or file name, it pulls the structure from your brand kit and enforces it automatically. No more inconsistent names breaking your analytics three months from now.

Validation and version control

Every brand kit gets a version number. When you update something (new product line, new color palette, new voice direction), you bump the version. Old workflows keep referencing the version they were built against, so updating your brand doesn’t break ads you launched two months ago. The skill maintains a changelog so you can see what changed when.

What’s inside the file

• YAML frontmatter (name, description, activation rules)
• Brand identity section (name, tagline, mission)
• Visual identity (colors, fonts, logo paths)
• Voice and tone (with banned phrases and required phrases)
• Product catalog (one entry per product with photos, copy, offer)
• Customer personas (linked to your creative matrix)
• Naming conventions (campaigns, ads, files)
• Version history
• /build-brand-kit interactive command
• Website auto-scrape mode

How to install

Download brand-kit-skill.md from the link below. Drop it into .claude/skills/ in your project directory. Run /build-brand-kit to fill it in (or /build-brand-kit from [your-url] to auto-scrape). Done.

If you already have a brand-kit.md from Pillar 1, run /upgrade-brand-kit after installing this skill. It’ll convert your existing file to the new format and preserve all your data.

Why this matters

Most AI marketing workflows fail not because the prompts are bad, but because the context is inconsistent. The same brand gets described five different ways across five different prompts, and the outputs drift accordingly. A proper brand kit skill is the cheapest way to fix that. One source of truth. Every workflow reads from it. Every output stays on-brand without you babysitting it.

This is the foundation. Every Friday Drop, every pillar, and every recurring tool teardown in this Vault assumes you have it installed.

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Next Monday’s Tool Teardown: Higgsfield Cinema Studio. Verdict, real test, what to use it for, what to avoid.

Next Friday’s drop: a Persona Generator Prompt Pack — turn one customer description into four ready-to-test personas for your creative matrix.