act-brand-alignment

name	act-brand-alignment
description	ACT brand alignment for all ecosystem projects. Use for ANY work on ACT sites, projects, content, design, or strategy. Understands ACT identity, LCAA method, dual-entity structure, all projects, voice/tone, and visual language.

ACT Brand Alignment

When to Use

• Writing/editing ANY ACT content (web, marketing, grants, reports)
• Designing UI, visual assets, or brand materials
• Planning information architecture
• Creating content models or data structures
• Reviewing copy for voice/tone alignment

Quick Reference

Identity

A Curious Tractor is a regenerative innovation ecosystem partnering with marginalised—especially First Nations—communities to dismantle extractive systems. Like a tractor's power take-off, we transfer resources to community-led initiatives. We hand over the keys.

Method (LCAA)

Listen → Curiosity → Action → Art

Values

• Radical Humility (no saviors)
• Decentralised Power (communities lead)
• Creativity as Disruption (revolution through imagination)
• Truth-telling (name extractive systems)

Promise

40% of profits flow to community ownership. We design for our own obsolescence.

Project Scope Mapping

Project	Focus	Load
Hub (act.place)	ACT as ecosystem, LCAA, partnerships	brand-core.md
ACT Farm / BCV	Land practice, conservation, residencies	land-practice.md
JusticeHub	Justice innovation, forkable models	projects-ecosystem.md
Empathy Ledger	Ethical storytelling, consent, sovereignty	projects-ecosystem.md
The Harvest	CSA, community gatherings	land-practice.md
Goods on Country	Circular economy, waste-to-product, comms agent system	goods.md
Art	Art as revolution, cultural production	projects-ecosystem.md

Voice Guardrails

Writing voice (load references/writing-voice.md for ANY public-facing writing). ACT voice uses Ian Curtis's method of compression: name the room, name the body, load the abstract noun, stop the line before the explanation. Forbidden AI tells (delve, crucial, pivotal, tapestry, underscore, em dashes, negative parallelisms, superficial -ing tails, "challenges and future prospects" formulas) are listed in that file and must be rejected on sight.

Auto-grade before sending

For any pitch, grant, web copy, board report, donor letter, journal spread, caption, or essay, run the voice grader before declaring the draft ready:

node scripts/grade-voice.mjs --file <path> --project <slug> --genre <slug>

• --project slugs: hub, justicehub, empathy-ledger, goods, bcv, harvest, farm, art, oonchiumpa, bg-fit, mounty-yarns, picc
• --genre slugs: pitch, grant, web, board-report, donor-letter, journal-spread, caption, essay, press

Verdict semantics:

• pass → safe to send (all four Curtis moves landed, no AI tells, plainness clean)
• warn → operational sections may carry technical register (acceptable for working drafts; tighten the cover/exec-summary/email opener before submission)
• fail → at least one Tier 1 hard rule tripped (em-dash, forbidden vocab, negative parallelism, etc.) — do not send until fixed

The grader writes its full output to stdout and exits non-zero on fail. Capture grades to thoughts/shared/reviews/<slug>.voice-grade.md for any artefact going to a funder.

Rubric source of truth: thoughts/shared/rubrics/act-voice-curtis.md v1.0 (calibrated 6/6 on canonical fixtures). Any rule change must mirror back to references/writing-voice.md.

Cost: ~$0.02 per grade (Sonnet 4.6, ~3K tokens). Use --tier1-only for a free deterministic check.

Funder-cadence grade (in addition to voice grade, for any funder-facing draft)

For any pitch, term-sheet response, renewal, follow-up, or report addressed to a specific funder, also run the funder-cadence grader. Layered on top of the voice grade: voice-curtis catches AI-tells, funder-cadence catches funder-specific cadence misses (wrong opener for the relationship stage, leading with a claims_to_avoid claim, dollars cited without an invoice or signed-letter row, primary-contact name out of date).

node scripts/grade-funder-cadence.mjs --file <path> --funder <slug> [--cycle <slug>]

• --funder slugs (resolved against wiki/narrative/funders.json): minderoo, qbe-catalysing-impact, dusseldorp-forum, paul-ramsay-foundation, tim-fairfax, smith-family, amnesty-australia, niaa, jcf, atlassian-foundation, snow-foundation, patagonia, allbirds, who-gives-a-crap, centrecorp, rotary-eclub-outback, vincent-fairfax, social-impact-hub, state-qld-dfsdscs, streetsmart-australia, westpac-scholars-trust
• --cycle slugs (optional): intro, pitch, renewal, report, followup, term-sheet. Skip if the cycle isn't yet defined in funders.json.
• --tier1-only for a free deterministic pass (skips the Sonnet 4.6 call but keeps every dollar-citation, forbidden-claim, and canonical-name check).

Verdict semantics mirror voice-curtis (pass / warn / fail); a Tier-3 judgment miss (claims-to-avoid leading, dollar uncited, stage misalignment, primary-contact stale) counts as fail not warn per the 2026-05-07 calibration. Capture grades to thoughts/shared/reviews/<slug>.funder-cadence-grade.md for any artefact going to a funder.

Run both the voice-curtis grader AND the funder-cadence grader before declaring a funder-facing draft ready to send. Voice grader is funder-agnostic (project + genre); funder-cadence is funder-specific (claims, stage, contact).

Rubric source of truth: thoughts/shared/rubrics/funder-cadence.md v0.1 (calibrated 6/6 on Minderoo Goods pitch, QBE term-sheet, Dusseldorp renewal + 3 negative fixtures).

Alignment-loop self-grade (for synthesis docs only)

Auto-applied by the three scripts/synthesize-*.mjs Phase-1 cycle scripts (project-truth-state, funder-alignment, entity-migration-truth-state). Grades the synthesis against thoughts/shared/rubrics/alignment-loop-synthesis.md v0.1 via scripts/lib/alignment-loop-grade.mjs. On pass the synthesis commits clean; on warn/fail a triage report lands at wiki/output/lint-loop-YYYY-MM-DD.md. Pass --no-grade only when running in environments without ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (cron stubs, CI without secrets).

DO:

• Farm metaphor: seeds, harvest, cultivating, soil, seasons, fields
• Community ownership, co-stewardship, Indigenous sovereignty
• "Designing for obsolescence" / "handing over the keys"
• Name Jinibara Country when referencing the land
• 40% profit-sharing commitment
• Concrete rooms. Concrete bodies. Stopped lines.

DON'T:

• Overclaim ("world-leading," "revolutionary")
• Extractive, luxury, or commercial language
• Frame communities as beneficiaries (they are co-owners)
• Corporate jargon or glossy marketing speak
• Imply permanence (we design for obsolescence)
• AI register (puffery, rule of three, elegant variation, em dashes, significance claims)

Visual Language

• Palette: Stone 50-900 + Emerald accents
• Typography: Geist Sans
• Motifs: Seeds, cockatoos, regenerative farming

File References

Need	Reference
Identity, LCAA, values, voice	references/brand-core.md
Writing voice (Curtis method + AI tells to avoid)	references/writing-voice.md
Land details, conservation	references/land-practice.md
All projects/seeds, revenue	references/projects-ecosystem.md
Page patterns, IA	references/content-structure.md