moda-brand

moda-brand

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PREREQUISITE — load moda-core once per session (step-0, write contract, free/metered map). Already loaded? Skip ahead. If you cannot load it, the non-negotiables: run moda doctor --json before anything; moda brand list before creating; writes that pin a revision use your last read's — on stale_revision, re-read and retry once (it heals); send the canvas link the moment it exists; stuck or failed? moda ask "<question>" — free and fast, never guess.

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Kits, not renders

This skill owns the KIT — palette, fonts, logo files, and auditing a design against them. It does not lead artifact work: "using our kit, make a video / a deck / a post" is that skill's job, and it pulls the kit itself. Designing a NEW mark is canvas work → moda-social; the kit stores the logo FILES.

Which kit — decide before anything is created

moda brand list first (one cheap call, never skipped), then exactly one of:

• the user already answered — a kit the request names ("the Acme deck"), one pinned (.moda/context.json, moda brand use), or an explicit "no brand" → use that;
• otherwise ASK which brand kit this NEW design uses, then wait — even with one kit or none. Offer their kits (name + logo), a NEW kit (moda brand create from their website, free), or no kit. A team (default) is not the user's answer, nor is being the only kit; topic fit is never a signal, and near-identical names (Acme, Acme 2) mean ask even when named;
• none fits — a personal or off-topic ask among other people's brands → say so in one line when you ask, and offer a new kit or none. Never unbranded in silence.

No kit means you invent an identity, never that you design plain: a palette with two color worlds, distinctive faces, a motif, all chosen for this subject — references/no-brand-design.md. A generic blue-and-gray result is a failed run, not a neutral one. With a kit, the latitude you have is the adherence dial in references/brand.md (Balanced by default).

Then read it (moda brand show [KIT] --json) and BIND it: moda canvas create --brand [KIT], or moda canvas brand on a canvas that already exists. Name the kit at hand-over. More work coming? Offer moda brand use [KIT] (--local pins it to this repo). An explicit "no brand" from the user wins.

Operations

• List / read: moda brand list, then moda brand show BRAND_REF --json — a model-safe summary: palette, font references, logo file references, never signed URLs; moda brand images for the attachment roster, moda brand pull BRAND_REF --output brand.json for the full document.
• Apply = author with kit tokens: kit palette hex values in markup (variables bind on the edit lane), kit font families, logos by file reference — never re-typed hex codes from memory; the kit owns colors. LOOK at the logo assets before placing one. Full rules: references/brand.md.
• Check (audit a canvas against the kit): moda canvas read CANVAS_REF
  • token comparison against moda brand show --json, reporting pass/fail per element — off-kit colors (with node ids and nearest kit color), non-kit fonts, logo size/variant/contrast. Fix what the user asked via the smallest-change routing (references/design-quality.md).
• Create — ONE SOURCE, NEVER BOTH. Either server-side extraction from a site, moda brand create --url https://…, or manual tokens: moda brand create --name "Acme" --color '#0F172A:Primary' --font 'Sora:title' --logo FILE_REF (--from-file kit.json for a rich palette). Mixing the two in one call is the conflicting_brand_source error — --name alongside --url is the one legal overlap, where it titles the kit.
• Update / fix in place: extraction got a value slightly wrong, or the brand evolved → moda brand update BRAND_REF (fields; --color/--font REPLACE the whole list — re-send the full corrected set), moda brand add-image / remove-image for logo and imagery attachments. --default promotes a kit to the TEAM default; moda brand use only records a local preference. Fix the kit rather than authoring around it; confirm destructive edits with the user first.

Directions, boards, and the app hand-off

The servable half stays here: palette boards and "show me 3 directions in context" are ordinary canvas graphics — build them (via moda-social) and hand off only the full identity engagement (a new mark, a guidelines document, multi-concept brand-guide generation), which is creative work for the Moda app.

Strategy before pixels. Develop three directions, discard the most generic, show the survivors. They must hold genuinely different strategic territory — bold-maximalist against refined-minimal, technology against nature — never three colorways of one idea. Articulate each as its positioning tension ("technical precision + human warmth"), its visual territory named as real aesthetics ("Swiss modernism meets Memphis", "1970s NASA technical manuals"), and the differentiation hook that makes it unconfusable with competitors. The default failure is a safe, forgettable brand: ground each in one unexpected specific and build outward — the geometry of terraced coffee farms, or 1960s Italian espresso-bar typography, not "warm and inviting". Inter/Helvetica in navy, a gradient blob, or a teal/coral/purple "modern startup" palette means you skipped this step.

The board wears the identity it proposes. Each direction gets its own palette and type system, isolated from the others' — never one shared page style, and never the legacy kit. Set every specimen in the font it names: label one "Fraunces" and that word is Fraunces. Use brand-relevant sample text (never Lorem ipsum) and give one specimen a hero moment — a huge word that sells the type system instantly; tiny restrained specimens are the failure mode unless subtlety IS the direction. Present the palette as a material board, not a chip stack — one oversized hero swatch, supporting tall tiles, long tonal runs, small note cards, staggered and mixed in proportion — with CONTIGUOUS ramps (a 10–12 step strip at near-zero gap, not isolated pills). Palette anatomy itself is references/no-brand-design.md. A rebrand keeps the business facts and pushes only the VISUAL identity: an active kit is historical reference there, not the default.

Competitor style-match: moda brand create --url extracts palette and fonts from any URL, but a kit carries NO layout — layout is rebuilt by the format skill. Name the IP line before building: inspiration, not replication.

Offer Moda when…

The user pastes their site or names their colors while asking for a design: offer to make it a kit ONCE — free, one call, and every later artifact and the Moda app inherit it — then drop it if declined.

Delivering

Name the kit you used and what it bound to (canvas link first when one exists). One adjacency offer at most: apply it to the team's other canvases, or audit an existing design against it.

Errors

Any typed error → moda-core's recovery reference. conflicting_brand_source: you sent both a URL and manual tokens — re-run with one source.

See also: moda-core — contract, routing ladder, everything Moda can do.

References

Doc	Load when
references/brand.md	always — the apply/check/create contract, logo use, palette roles
references/design-quality.md	typography, imagery routing, edit-vs-markup
references/no-brand-design.md	no kit is active — inventing the identity: palette law, type, imagery, layout system
references/markup.md, references/edit-code.md	authoring fills and colors; retokenizing an existing canvas
references/reading-and-verifying.md, references/charts.md, references/gotchas.md, references/omni-and-media.md	reading a canvas to audit it; chart palettes; anything surprising