Free companion · Lesson 1 of 2 · The Viable Edge

The Brand Knowledge Base Kit

Seven short documents your AI tools read before they write, an agent that drafts them from your website in one command, and the audit that tells you when they've gone stale.

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Companion to "Fix "AI Slop" With a Brand Knowledge Base," live Wed Sep 16, 12 PM ET Replay and registration maven.com/p/3d4fdd

The problem in one line

Your AI tools don't know who you are.

Every prompt re-explains the company from scratch, so every output drifts a little further from the last. The fix isn't a better prompt. It's a folder the tools read first: seven documents, plain text, two pages each. That folder is the knowledge base. Build it once, keep it current, and "AI slop" stops being a model problem and starts being a context problem you can actually solve.

Before you build · 10 minutes

The drift audit

Pull up three pieces of AI-written content from your brand (a post, an email, a page). Check each against the five symptoms and count the hits.

Symptom	What it looks like	Which document fixes it
Channel drift	Site, deck, email, and social describe slightly different companies	01 Positioning, 07 Company Profile
The re-explain tax	Every prompt starts with a paragraph about who you are	All seven. That paragraph is the knowledge base, unwritten.
Category voice	It reads like your industry, not like you	06 Differentiation, 03 Voice and Tone
Wrong room	It's talking to someone who isn't your buyer	02 Ideal Customers
Nothing stays current	The brand doc from March is already wrong	05 Competitors, 07 Company Profile (dated fields)

Three or more: the tools are guessing. Run the audit again 30 days after the base exists. The count should be zero or one.

The seven documents · fill them in this order

Each one answers a single question.

Numbered because the order matters: each document feeds the next, and 03 sets the voice the others get rewritten in. Two pages per document is plenty. A paragraph is a fine start.

Positioning

If a customer had to choose between you and the obvious alternative, what is the single reason they'd pick you, in one sentence?

What goes in

Category you compete in, in the customer's words, not yours
Who it's for, one line (the full version lives in 02)
The core claim: what you do that the alternative doesn't
Proof: the two or three facts that make the claim believable
What you are not: the adjacent things people confuse you with

Example line: "The knowledge base your other tools should read from. Not another writing tool."

Ideal Customers

Who were your last three best customers, and what did they have in common the day before they found you?

What goes in

Two or three segments, each with: role or situation, the trigger that made them look, what they tried first, what they're afraid of
The words they use for the problem (steal from calls, emails, reviews)
Who you turn away, and why

Voice and Tone

Put your best-performing piece of writing next to your worst. What does the good one do that the bad one doesn't?

What goes in

Four or five voice attributes, each with a one-line definition ("Direct: lead with the point, not the preamble")
Tone by context: how the voice shifts between homepage, email, social, support
Do / Don't lists with real examples from your own copy
Banned words and patterns (buzzwords, punctuation habits, AI-isms you keep seeing)
Five sentences that sound exactly like you

Draft this one from your best existing copy, then go back and rewrite 01 and 04 in it.

Messaging Framework

What are the three things you'd want every customer to be able to repeat about you after one conversation?

What goes in

Core message, one sentence
Three supporting pillars, each with a claim, a proof point, and a customer-facing line
Message by segment: which pain leads for each customer type from 02
Objection handling: the five questions you hear most, with the answer you want every tool to give
Trust commitments (data, guarantees, what never happens without the customer)

Competitors

When you lose a deal, who do you lose to, and when you win, what did they try first?

What goes in

Named competitors: what they do well, where they fall short, how you talk about them (and how you never do)
Category alternatives: the workarounds people use instead of buying anything (a freelancer, a shared doc, "just paste it into ChatGPT")
Naming collisions: terms in your space that mean something narrower when a competitor says them
A last-reviewed date on every entry. This is the document that goes stale first.

Differentiation

What would the customer lose if they went with the alternative? Answer in their words, not yours.

What goes in

For each dimension that matters to buyers: what the old alternative does, what you eliminate, reduce, raise, or create
The one line per alternative that names its failure mode before you introduce yours
What you deliberately don't do, and why that's a feature

Why this one matters most: Positioning says what you are. Differentiation says why the alternative isn't good enough. Without it, every AI draft reads like the category.

Company Profile

If a new hire had one page to read before their first day, what would be on it?

What goes in

Name, products, category, business model, pricing
What it does, in three sentences
How it's used: where it lives, what it connects to
Founding logic: the problem it exists to solve, in the founder's words
Adjacent offerings (newsletter, community, services, courses)
Dated facts: team size, key numbers, anything that will change

The starter kit · one folder, one command

Don't fill in seven documents by hand. Point an agent at your website.

The kit is the folder from the live session: seven skeletons, the rules the agent follows, and four jobs. /kb-build drafts all seven from your site. /kb-ingest feeds it a transcript or an old deck and proposes edits. /kb-review is the monthly check for what went stale. /kb-check scores any draft against the base and hands back the fix. Everything after the first build is propose-then-apply; nothing changes without you. Works in Claude Code out of the box; Codex, Cursor, and any agent that reads a project file get the same jobs through AGENTS.md. No agent? PROMPT.md is the paste-in version for Claude or ChatGPT.

brand-kb-starter-kit/
├── README.md            start here, 15 minutes
├── CLAUDE.md            what goes where, what never goes in
├── AGENTS.md            same job for Codex and Cursor
├── PROMPT.md            paste-in version, no files needed
├── audit.md             the 10-minute drift audit
├── .claude/commands/
│   ├── kb-build.md      /kb-build       draft all seven
│   ├── kb-ingest.md     /kb-ingest     feed it new material
│   ├── kb-review.md     /kb-review           monthly stale check
│   └── kb-check.md      /kb-check     score copy, get the fix
├── inputs/              transcripts, old brand docs, reviews
└── knowledge-base/
    ├── 01-positioning.md
    ├── 02-ideal-customers.md
    ├── 03-voice-and-tone.md
    ├── 04-messaging-framework.md
    ├── 05-competitors.md
    ├── 06-differentiation.md
    └── 07-company-profile.md

1Download and unzip. Open the folder in Claude Code (or your agent).

2Run /kb-build https://yourcompany.com. About eight minutes. It ends with what your site didn't tell it and three questions to answer.

3Open 03-voice-and-tone.md first. Fix what it got wrong. Then the other six.

4The payoff test: /kb-check on something you wrote last week. Or run a prompt you use often with the folder loaded and without. Keep the one that sounds like you.

5Then the rhythm: /kb-ingest whenever a transcript lands, /kb-review once a month. About twenty minutes a month, by hand. The scheduled version that runs across your connectors and stages a Friday review is what the workshop sets up on your machine.

Download the kit (zip, 15 KB)

Plain markdown. Nothing phones home. Every claim the agent can't verify from your site is marked [unverified] instead of invented.

No agent tool? Give this to Claude or ChatGPT

The paste-in version

Same seven documents, same rules, one prompt. Replace the URL and paste. You'll get text instead of files; save each one as its own document.

Build a brand knowledge base for [URL]. Read the site (home, about, product or services, pricing, a blog post or two) and write seven short documents, each under two pages, in this order: 1. Positioning: the category in the customer's words, who it's for in one line, the core claim (what we do that the obvious alternative doesn't), two or three proof points, what we are not. 2. Ideal Customers: two or three segments, each with the role or situation, the trigger that made them look, what they tried first, what they're afraid of, and the words they use for the problem. Who we turn away. 3. Voice and Tone: four or five voice attributes with one-line definitions, how tone shifts by context (site, email, social, support), do/don't with real examples from the site, banned words and AI-isms, five sentences that sound exactly like this company. 4. Messaging Framework: core message in one sentence, three pillars each with a claim, a proof point, and a customer-facing line, which pain leads for each segment, the five most likely objections with the answer we want every tool to give, trust commitments. 5. Competitors: named competitors and the workarounds people use instead (a freelancer, a shared doc, "just paste it into ChatGPT"), how we talk about each and how we never do, naming collisions. Date every entry. 6. Differentiation: for each dimension buyers care about, what the alternative does and what we eliminate, reduce, raise, or create. One line per alternative naming its failure mode. What we deliberately don't do and why that's a feature. 7. Company Profile: name, products, category, business model, pricing, what it does in three sentences, how it's used, founding logic in the founder's words, adjacent offerings, dated facts. Rules: mark anything you cannot verify from the site as [unverified]; never invent numbers, customers, or quotes; write documents 1 and 4 in the voice you define in 3; put a "Last reviewed" date on each. End with what the site did not tell you and the three questions I should answer to close the gaps.

Keeping it current

A knowledge base that doesn't move is a brand doc with a new name.

Docs 05 and 07 go stale first. Every entry carries a last-reviewed date. If a date is older than the last thing that changed in your market, that entry is wrong.
Monthly, one command: /kb-review. It re-reads the site and inputs/, flags stale dates and contradictions, writes proposals. Read them, say "apply."
The kit does it when you ask. The workshop version does it while you sleep. Ingest across Gmail, transcripts, and Slack on a schedule, decision rules for what gets logged, drift watching on your site and competitors. That's the Oct 8 setup, and the Care Plan after it.
Feed it what you already have. Call transcripts, reviews, old brand decks, sales emails go in inputs/. Customer language beats marketing language every time, and it's the thing no website can give the agent.
Never put in what you'd regret pasting elsewhere. These files get loaded into other tools. No credentials, no unreleased pricing, no client-confidential material.

Where it plugs in

One folder, every tool.

ClaudeAdd the folder as project knowledge. Claude Code and Cowork read CLAUDE.md automatically.

ChatGPTPaste the seven files into a Project or custom instructions.

Codex, Cursor, other agentsAGENTS.md carries the same job. Point the system prompt at knowledge-base/.

Brand ArchitectKeeps a hosted copy, watches your site and competitors, and proposes the edits. Free first build from your site.

If you want it done, or done with you

Three ways forward. Pick one or none.

Do it yourself

Run the kit this week

One site, one command, fifteen minutes of editing. If it takes more than 30 minutes end to end, reply to the lesson email and tell me where it stalled.

Back to the kit ↑

Build it with me · Oct 8

The Brand Knowledge Base Workshop

Four hours, live, all seven documents built for your brand with your judgment in the loop, and you leave with the agent set up on your machine.

$497 · code LESSON100 takes $100 off for lesson attendeesEnroll on Maven →

Have it done

Knowledge Audit, 90 minutes

I run the drift audit on your real content, build the first draft of all seven live with you on the call, and hand you the folder.

$497Book on Maven →

Already took my knowledge base course? Skip the workshop; it will be repetitive. Email me and I'll tell you honestly which of these, if any, adds something.