Thoughtfully Guiding
Reflective · Supportive · Confident
“Notice what feels true for you right now.”
“Stop thinking about this man. He won’t come back.”
Product
Nebula is a spirituality and self-reflection app with astrology, readings, and guided practices, built by OBRIO (Genesis). During a rebrand, it was moving away from a “magical astrology app” toward a more mature spiritual brand.
Problem
Different parts of the product had drifted into different voices: marketing copy leaned on urgency and pain points, while in-app content stayed esoteric. Writers had no shared reference for how Nebula should sound.
Solution
I co-created a three-pillar tone of voice, paired each pillar with “say this, not that” examples, listed what the voice never does, and turned it all into a Claude skill that reviews any copy against the guidelines.
Result
The framework was adopted across product, design, and marketing, and became an everyday tool — from writers checking drafts to product managers sense-checking the next version of a paywall screen.
Insights
Brand voice has to come from a system, not just vibe
Before writing a single guideline, we pulled together how the product actually talked today across onboarding, paywall, and support copy, and sat down with stakeholders (such as retention, growth, and content teams) to find out what each of them actually needed. Alongside that, we looked at how established consumer apps handle their own tone of voice, including Duolingo, Headspace, and Revolut, to see how they structured and communicated guidelines that people across a company would actually use.
Say This, Not That — simple examples people could actually check their copy against
The three pillars — Thoughtfully Guiding, Gently Empathetic, Accessibly Inspirational — came from the brand agency as part of the rebrand. Turning them into something our product could use was on us. Instead of leaving them as abstract brand language, I paired each pillar with a direct “Say this, not that” contrast, the way established brands structure their tone-of-voice guides. A writer no longer had to interpret a principle: they could hold a line of copy up against concrete examples on either side.
Things to avoid
Fig. 1 · What the voice never does
Automation makes perfect
Big companies often suffer from over-documentation, and I didn’t want this to become another forgotten Notion page. A framework only works if people check their copy against it, so I turned the guidelines into a Claude skill that reviews any copy against the pillars and flags where it drifts. That made the tone of voice an active tool anyone could use, from a copywriter checking a draft to a product manager sense-checking the next version of a paywall screen.
Claude· Nebula tone-of-voice skill
Does this sound like Nebula?
“Worried you missed your chance to find love? Act before it’s too late.”
Checked against 3 voice pillars and the avoid list
Not quite on-brand. Two things to fix:
- “Act before it’s too late” is a fear hook, which the guidelines list under things to avoid.
- It assumes the reader is worried instead of meeting them where they are (Gently Empathetic).
Try: “Whenever you’re ready, let’s look at what your chart says about love.”
Paste copy to check against the voice…
Fig. 2 · The tone-of-voice skill reviewing a line of copy
What I learned
Getting the pillars right on paper was the easier half — making a tone-of-voice document that people across the company would actually use turned out to be the real challenge.
The main friction came from copy across channels having different audiences and goals — how the brand team talks isn’t how the growth marketing team talks, and both had real reasons for it. Building one shared framework meant finding compromises that would work for most of the company rather than a set of rules that satisfied any single team perfectly.