Waggle OS — Brand Voice Reference

Status: Inferred from CLAUDE.md + existing Marko-authored docs and ratified during the April 2026 competitive-brief review (cowork/Waggle-OS_Competitive_Brief_BRAND-REVIEW.md). This is the working voice contract for all Waggle-facing writing — website, product copy, research notes, launch materials, KVARK pitches.

Scope: External and internal writing. Applies when the audience is a reader who doesn't already know the product — buyers, developers, press, analysts, new hires.

Voice attributes

Attribute	We are	We are NOT	Sounds like	Does NOT sound like
Precise	numbers, verified facts, cited sources	vague, approximate, generic	"12 competitors across 4 tiers"	"many leading AI platforms"
Builder	written for people shipping product	written for decks or investors	"Ship Teams first and define shared-memory primitives."	"Empower teams to unlock synergies."
Anti-hype	no superlatives without evidence	superlatives, empty adjectives	"Notion's installed base is the moat."	"A category-defining, best-in-class platform."
Direct	imperatives, short declaratives, stated opinions	hedged, passive, committee-voiced	"Do not position against ChatGPT by brand."	"It may be worth considering positioning alternatives."
Honest	surfaces threats, limits, tradeoffs	omits inconvenient facts	"Waggle's biggest threat: Claude Cowork ships on Anthropic's distribution."	"Some headwinds exist."

What "Anti-hype" means in practice

These phrases are banned unless backed by a cited benchmark or number:

"world-class" · "best-in-class" · "industry-leading" · "game-changing" · "category-defining"
"seamless" · "intuitive" · "beautiful" · "powerful" · "cutting-edge"
"revolutionary" · "transformative" · "next-generation" · "enterprise-grade" (without specifics)
"the most dangerous / advanced / capable" superlatives without comparator

Replacements:

Banned	Specific
"beautiful prosumer UX"	"system-audio capture avoids the 'bot has joined' moment"
"best-in-class voice"	"still the clearest desktop voice implementation per X survey"
"canonical content opportunity"	"highest-leverage content gap"
"unique sales geometry"	"a funnel no competitor can copy without rebuilding their stack"
"the most dangerous competitor"	"highest-threat competitor: ships on Anthropic's distribution"

Numerical claims require sources

Any numeric claim in external writing must have one of:

a public citation (company announcement, SEC filing, Crunchbase, G2 review count)
a link to the raw methodology (our own benchmark code + dataset)
an explicit [unverified — anecdotal] annotation if the source is private

Do not anchor marketing claims on numbers we can't defend. A wrong number undermines the whole artifact.

Examples of claims that need sources or removal:

"700M WAU" — cite or replace with "distribution at consumer scale"
"30-40% POC conversion rate" — cite or drop
"6-9 month competitive window" — explain basis (release cadence, etc.) or drop

"Probability: high" is a reserved phrase

For competitor-roadmap speculation:

Do not write "Probability: high" as if it's data. It's speculation dressed as measurement.
Write instead: "Likely within X months — based on [public signal / release cadence / hiring patterns]"
Never state a competitor's internal roadmap as a measurement. It's an inference and should read that way.

Formatting

Em dash: no spaces — tight typography. X—Y not X — Y. Exception: in sentences where a spaced em dash improves readability, prefer X -- Y (double hyphen) or rework.
Oxford comma: always. fast, reliable, and secure not fast, reliable and secure.
Headings: Sentence case. ## Why the KVARK motion works not ## Why The Kvark Motion Works.
URLs: bare-form without https:// in body copy. waggle-os.ai not https://www.waggle-os.ai. Use full URLs in tables and links.
Product names: Waggle OS in titles, Waggle in running prose. KVARK is always capitalized. hive-mind is always lowercase (repo name convention).

Honest-voice pattern

Surface the three most uncomfortable facts before anyone else does:

Largest threat by impact — name it, explain why, say what you're doing about it.
Thing we can't do yet — what's the gap to the strongest competitor on their strongest axis?
Decision we might be wrong about — a bet with visible downside.

Examples from the competitive brief:

"Claude Cowork ships on Anthropic's distribution, brand, and frontier model." (threat)
"No competitor has Solo→KVARK continuity." (strength claim; followed by "but none of the 12 surveyed do" — bounded)
"Open-source Memory creates lock-in, but it also hands competitors our substrate." (honest tradeoff)

What this file is NOT

Not a style guide for code comments (that's CLAUDE.md §3.6-3.7 — default no comments).
Not a marketing persona document (personas live in docs/research/05-user-personas-ai-os.md).
Not a positioning framework (positioning lives in docs/research/06-waggle-os-product-overview.md).

This is the voice — the feel and cadence of how we speak as a product. Audiences and positioning are elsewhere.

Ratifying this document

Adopted April 15, 2026. Basis: cowork/Waggle-OS_Competitive_Brief_BRAND-REVIEW.md voice-attribute table, scored 8/10 with three High-severity correction areas addressed.

Changes require a commit to this file. Disagreements surface in review of artifacts that violate the voice — flag + propose a rewrite + update this file if a pattern emerges.

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