icp-brand-voice

name	icp-brand-voice
description	ICP / DFINITY positioning, voice, and vocabulary v2 for surfaces under the DFINITY or Internet Computer (ICP) mark. Pairs with icp-brand-design. Use when writing or reviewing copy, UI strings, headlines, hero lines, buttons, errors, release notes, blog posts, marketing pages, developer docs, social posts, decks. Enforces the calm, factual, plain voice (no hyperbole, no em-dashes, no emoji), the locked positioning ('Sovereign cloud. Software that is alive.'), the five public pillars (On-demand, Tamperproof, Always-on, Fluid, Yours), and the strict ban on bare 'onchain' or 'on-chain' as nouns, attributes, or selling points. Triggers, ICP voice, DFINITY voice, brand voice, is this on brand, vocabulary check, tagline review, headline review, ICP positioning, write a headline. OISY, Caffeine, and other ecosystem products with their own verbal systems are out of scope.
metadata	{"brand_guide_version_at_authoring":"v2.25","brand_guide_rules_url":"https://jgwns-tqaaa-aaaao-ba5ua-cai.icp0.io/rules.json"}

ICP / DFINITY Brand Voice & Positioning v2.6

Rules of record check (FIRST STEP, EVERY TASK)

Before applying any rule in this skill, fetch the live brand rules and check the version.

GET https://jgwns-tqaaa-aaaao-ba5ua-cai.icp0.io/rules.json

This file is the machine-readable source of truth for the DFINITY / Internet Computer brand. Compare the version field in the JSON against the version this skill was authored against:

• This skill was authored against brand guide v2.25.

If the live version is the same, proceed normally using the rules in this skill.

If the live version is newer (e.g., v2.26 or higher), surface a one-line warning to the user before continuing:

Note: brand guide is now vX.Y, this skill was written against v2.25. Using the live rules from /rules.json as the source of truth where they differ.

Then proceed using the live JSON as the source of truth for: positioning, banned characters, banned words, one-word spellings, font stack, accent color, italic rule, surfaces order, default theme, hyperbole ban, and emoji ban. Anything not covered in the JSON falls back to this skill.

If the fetch fails (offline, canister down), proceed using this skill's rules and mention to the user that the live rules could not be reached.

The human-readable brand guide lives at https://jgwns-tqaaa-aaaao-ba5ua-cai.icp0.io/.

---

Current version: v2.6 (2026-06-30). See the Changelog section at the bottom for history. Every change to this skill bumps the minor version and adds a line to the changelog. This release tracks brand guide v2.25, which adds a homepage hero variant for internetcomputer.org and locks AIware as a brand term. The canonical strap ("Sovereign cloud. Software that's alive.") is unchanged for every off-homepage surface. A controlled italic-rust carve-out applies to the homepage hero only.

When to Use This Skill

Load this skill when the user writes, edits, or reviews any copy under the DFINITY or Internet Computer mark. That includes:

• Product copy: UI strings, headlines, hero lines, button labels, error messages, empty states, toasts, email templates
• Website: internetcomputer.org and its subpages
• Developer documentation: docs pages, API references, tutorials, SDK sites
• Marketing material: landing pages, campaign pages, investor pages, press pages, decks
• Editorial: blog posts, long-form articles, release notes
• Social media: X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit posts for DFINITY or ICP accounts

Also load when the user says "does this read on brand", "tagline review", "headline check", "vocabulary review", "how should we describe ICP", "make this sound like ICP".

For how it should look (colors, type, components), load icp-brand-design. The two skills are designed to be used together.

Do NOT use this skill for:

• OISY wallet. Own voice and brand identity. Out of scope.
• Caffeine. Own voice and brand identity. Out of scope.
• Any other ecosystem product with its own established verbal system.

What ICP is (positioning, locked)

This section is the source of truth for how to describe ICP. If any copy you are reviewing disagrees with this section about what ICP is, the copy is wrong.

Top line, locked (canonical, master): Sovereign cloud. Software that's alive. (italic-rust on alive, with the period inside the italic span)

This is the master strap. Two sentences separated by a period. The italic-rust word is alive, which carries the claim that software on ICP is fluid: generated through AI chat on demand and extending itself with new natural-language functionality over time. The canonical strap ships on every off-homepage surface: decks, social banners, video conference backgrounds, email signatures, deck covers, investor pages, press pages, this guide. Do not reframe to "onchain", "World Computer", "trustless", "frontier cloud / for AI that builds" (the previous v2.17 strap, retired at v2.19), or any other variant on off-homepage surfaces.

Homepage hero variant (internetcomputer.org only)

The internetcomputer.org homepage runs a product-led variant of the H1 that names the artifact ICP runs, rather than the metaphor that describes it. The canonical strap and the homepage variant coexist on purpose: alive. describes what the network is, AIware names what runs on it.

• Eyebrow. § Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) · The internet overlay for AIware
• Hero H1, line one (static). Sovereign cloud.
• Hero H1, line two (rotation). Alternates between Runs AIware. and Tamperproof, always-on. Both phrases are italic-rust in full.
• Sub-strap. Create custom AIware apps and SaaS on-demand, which have fluid functionality. Italic-rust on fluid functionality only.

Italic-rust on the full line-two phrase (and on the two-word phrase fluid functionality in the sub-strap) is a controlled exception to the one-italic-word rule. It is scoped strictly to the homepage hero. Off-homepage surfaces continue to ship the canonical strap with italic-rust on alive. only, and the one-italic-word rule still applies there.

Where this variant is allowed. internetcomputer.org homepage and product pages on the same domain that talk about what ICP runs. Nowhere else.

AIware (locked product noun)

• Spelling, locked. Always AIware as one word: capital A, capital I, lowercase ware. Never AIWare, aiware, AI-ware, AIWARE, or AI ware. Treat as a proper noun.
• What it means. A new category of software that AI agents generate, extend, and operate on demand. AIware apps are generated through AI chat, expose their data and logic to the agent so it can add new functionality on the fly, and run end-to-end on the Internet Computer so they stay tamperproof, always-on, and under the user's control.
• Part of speech. Noun and adjective. Runs AIware (noun). AIware apps (adjective). Sophisticated AIware (noun). The same word does both jobs without modification.
• Do not substitute. Do not replace AIware with AI agents, agentic apps, AI-native apps, or agent-built apps on surfaces that reference the internetcomputer.org product noun. Those phrases describe the actors or the building style; AIware is the artifact.
• Relationship to the canonical strap. alive. describes what the network is. AIware names what runs on it. Both are correct, and both can appear on the same page when it serves the audience. The canonical strap stays the master line on off-homepage surfaces.

Five public pillars, locked order: On-demand · Tamperproof · Always-on · Fluid · Yours (italic on Yours)

The pillar row is the second piece of the positioning system. It appears on the homepage strap, on social banners, on video call backgrounds, in the email signature, and on deck covers. The five pillars are locked, in this order, with italic on Yours. On narrow social crops where five pillars do not fit, drop the first two and ship the compressed row Always-on · Fluid · Yours. Never drop Yours.

Long form

ICP is a sovereign cloud where the software itself is alive. Apps are generated on demand through AI chat at the speed of conversation, and they keep extending themselves over time with new natural-language functionality. The network underneath runs them tamperproof, always-on, and under the user's control, on hardware the user picks. It runs the whole app on the network itself: the frontend, the data, and the backend logic.

• On-demand. Apps, SaaS, and websites are generated through AI chat at the speed of conversation. No team to provision, no infrastructure to set up first. Caffeine and the ICP skill library make this work across Claude, Codex, Copilot, Cursor, and Perplexity.
• Tamperproof. Security is a property of the network, not a team. Tamperproof execution, replication, and code integrity are enforced by math across the nodes. No security team, no sysadmin, no compliance officer needed for what the network already enforces. In a world where attackers are AI agents too, this is the only model that scales.
• Always-on. A cloud engine is a set of nodes running the ICP protocol. Engines run on bare metal, on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, on local cloud providers, or across a mix of them. Nodes are distributed across independent locations, so an app keeps serving users even if a whole data centre goes down. No patch windows, no maintenance pages.
• Fluid. Software on ICP is not a static binary. AI can see the data inside the running app and extend its functionality on the fly through natural-language interfaces. Same app, new capability, no redeploy. This is what makes the software alive.
• Yours. An app deployed to ICP is not locked to a cloud vendor. Pick the hardware, the operators, and the jurisdiction. Move between providers, or off them entirely, without downtime. Users can pick cloud engines by jurisdiction, by operator, or by policy.

Out of scope. Products with their own brand identity, such as OISY and Caffeine, are not covered by this skill. They have their own voice.

Voice

DFINITY copy is calm, factual, and confident. It reads like The Economist, not a startup pitch deck. The voice grew out of the "Escaping Web3 Jargon" initiative. The goal is to sound like a frontier cloud where agents build apps, services, and systems, not a crypto project.

Four voice attributes (internal writing guardrails)

These describe how copy should sound. They are not the public pillars (above). They are not shown to readers as a list.

1. Factual. Every sentence states something concrete. If you can remove a sentence without losing information, remove it.
2. Plain. Read every sentence aloud. If you would not say it to a smart non-specialist friend, rewrite it.
3. Calm. No hype, no urgency theatre, no exclamation marks, no emoji. The product is self-evidently interesting.
4. Sovereign by math. When security, uptime, or tamperproof execution come up, the subject of the sentence is the network, not DFINITY and not the cloud underneath. Prefer "the network enforces", "replicated across the nodes", "cannot be changed without governance" over "we secure", "our team monitors", or anything that implies the guarantee comes from which cloud the nodes run on.

Hyperbole vs. factual metaphor

The ban on hyperbole stands. No "revolutionary", "world-first", "unprecedented", "game-changing", "mind-blowing", "next-generation", "cutting-edge", "paradigm shift". State the property factually instead.

Factual metaphors that describe a real product property are allowed in hero lines and lede paragraphs. Two are currently sanctioned:

• alive for fluid, AI-generated, self-extending software. This is the metaphor in the locked top line. It describes the actual behaviour of apps on ICP, not their rank or novelty.
• immune for the tamperproof property. As in "immune to infrastructure hacks". This describes a real protocol guarantee, not a marketing claim.

The distinction is rank/novelty (banned) versus property-description (allowed). If a metaphor describes a real, demonstrable behaviour of the product, it is on-brand. If it describes how impressive or how new the product is, it is not.

Style rules

• Sentence case for headlines, body, page titles, nav. Title Case only for proper nouns.
• UPPERCASE is reserved for two specific patterns: short eyebrows above sections (Inter typography in the design system) and small button labels. Sentence case everywhere else.
• Oxford comma. Straight apostrophes and quotes. US spelling.
• No em-dash (the U+2014 character). Replace with a colon, period, or parentheses. This is a strict ban: zero em-dashes in shipped copy.
• No emoji in product UI, marketing copy, or social posts from official accounts.
• No exclamation marks.
• Numbers: write out one through nine, use digits for 10+. Always digits for metrics.
• Active voice. Short sentences. Specific claims.

Italic

Italic is reserved. In headings, hero straps, and pillar rows, one italic word per line. The italic word lands on one of three targets:

• (a) Subject noun (default). The noun or noun phrase the line is about. Example: What ICP is.
• (b) Metaphor carrying the claim. The factual metaphor that describes the product property. Example: Sovereign cloud. Software that's alive. (italic on alive).
• (c) Possessive pronoun asserting sovereignty. Used in pillar rows. Example: On-demand · Tamperproof · Always-on · Fluid · Yours (italic on Yours).

Never italicise a verb, copula, article, or connector. Never italicise more than one word per line. Use the removal test: can the line still stand if the italic word is removed. If yes, the emphasis is on the wrong word.

Homepage hero carve-out (v2.25). The internetcomputer.org homepage H1 line two (Runs AIware. / Tamperproof, always-on.) and the sub-strap fragment fluid functionality are italic-rust in full as a controlled exception. This exception is scoped strictly to the homepage hero and sub-strap. Every other surface (off-homepage product pages, decks, banners, signatures, video conference backgrounds, this guide) ships one italic word per line.

Italic also carries:

• Asides ("e.g. ...")
• Captions, attributions, figure labels
• Book and publication titles

Never italic for stress in body copy. Never italic for entire blocks.

Button labels (examples)

• Good: "Get started", "Create account", "Deploy canister", "View proposal", "Start at opencloud.org", "Read the source"
• Bad: "Let's go!", "Unlock the future", "Dive in", "Learn more 🚀"

Vocabulary

Banned on top-of-funnel and in product UI

Top-of-funnel means the front page, hero, landing pages, investor-facing material, press, and any surface where an ICP newcomer might first meet us. On deep technical pages these terms can be used when accuracy requires them, but always with plain-language explanation.

• Web3, blockchain, crypto, token (as primary descriptors)
• DeFi, smart contract, dapp
• "decentralized" as the main selling point
• "blockchain platform"
• "onchain" or "on-chain" as a noun, attribute, or selling point. Always replace with the underlying app attribute (tamperproof, unstoppable, sovereign, end-to-end on the network, replicated across nodes). See the onchain replacement table below. This rule is non-negotiable.
• "tamper-proof" as two words or hyphenated. Always one word: tamperproof.
• "platform for building AI agents" (wrong frame: we are the platform agents build on, not the platform to build agents)
• "autonomous, always-on agents" (overclaims; implies the network runs the agent)
• "workload" (use throughput metrics instead)
• dfx or "Install dfx" anywhere in docs, tutorials, or UI. The CLI is icp.
• Unexplained jargon: subnet, cycles (define on first use if you must ship them)
• Hype words: revolutionizing, next-generation, paradigm shift, bleeding-edge, game-changing, unlock, seamless, disrupt
• Community slang: hodl, moon, fam, WAGMI, GM, ser, anon

Preferred framing

• What ICP is: a sovereign cloud. A sovereign cloud where software is alive. A network. A tamperproof, always-on platform.
• What ICP does: runs end-to-end on the network. Hosts apps that are tamperproof, always-on, and fluid. Generates apps on demand through AI chat. Provides tamperproof, always-on infrastructure.
• Who it's for: agents that build secure, tamperproof apps. Non-technical entrepreneurs deploying enterprise-grade apps. Developers who want sovereignty and vendor independence.
• CLI: the icp CLI. "Install the icp CLI." Never dfx.
• Backends: canisters, or "agent-built app backends." Never "smart contracts" in a developer pitch, never "workloads."
• Metrics: query throughput, update throughput, inference capacity, fault tolerance.
• Attribution: "Built on the Internet Computer" only when useful to the audience.

Do / don't pairs (high-signal substitutions)

Don't say	Say instead
Install dfx	Install the icp CLI
dfx deploy	icp deploy
Platform for building AI agents	Frontier cloud where AI agents build apps, services, and systems that stay tamperproof and keep their data across upgrades
Autonomous, always-on agents	Apps that are secure, tamperproof, and unstoppable
Blockchain platform	Sovereign cloud / tamperproof, always-on infrastructure
Decentralized (as the pitch)	Tamperproof, unstoppable, sovereign
Smart contracts (to developers)	Canisters, or agent-built app backends
Workload	Query throughput / update throughput / fault tolerance
Revolutionizing / next-generation	Name the specific capability
Enterprise-grade / bank-grade security	Tamperproof by the network, integrity enforced across the nodes
We keep your data safe	The network keeps data replicated across the nodes
Trust us	Verify it
Secure hosting	Sovereign cloud
No downtime	Stays online if any node or cloud underneath fails
Hosted on AWS (as a positive)	Portable across AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, local clouds, and bare metal
Cyber security team (as a requirement)	No security team required for what the network already enforces
Build onchain apps	Build tamperproof, always-on apps on a sovereign cloud
Onchain governance	Tamperproof governance / governance enforced by the network
Onchain data	Tamperproof data / data replicated across the nodes
Onchain identity	Sovereign identity / network-verified identity
Fully on-chain	End-to-end on the network / served and computed by the network
Runs on-chain	Runs end-to-end on the network
Onchain AI	AI that ships tamperproof on a frontier cloud
Tamper-proof / tamper proof	Tamperproof (one word, always)

Replacing "onchain" and "on-chain" (context-aware)

The word "onchain" hides what we actually mean. It is a category label, not a benefit. Always replace it with the specific attribute of the app or system being described. Pick the substitution that matches the claim being made:

Underlying claim	Use this language
Integrity / can't be altered	tamperproof, tamperproof by the network, integrity enforced across the nodes
Availability	unstoppable, stays online if any node or cloud underneath fails, always available
Where it runs	end-to-end on the network, on a sovereign cloud, served and computed by the network
Independence	sovereign, sovereign by design, no single operator can change or pull the app
Verifiability	verifiable, every change replicated and verified by the network
Data persistence	data replicated across the nodes, no data loss across upgrades
Governance	governance enforced by the network, tamperproof governance