Skill of the day: `brand-guidelines`

brand-guidelines is an official Anthropic Agent Skill shipped inside the example-skills plugin (marketplace anthropic-agent-skills) that applies Anthropic official brand colors and typography to artifacts that need Anthropic look-and-feel. Use for brand colors / style guidelines / visual formatting. Install: /plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills. MDX pillar: reviews (never skills). Checked 2026-10-02.

TL;DR: Anthropic palette + Poppins/Lora for artifacts that need Anthropic look-and-feel — not a universal “any company brand kit” autopilot. [GAP]: no solo /plugin install brand-guidelines@… — install unit is example-skills. Labs support: claude brand guidelines 140 carry-forward (not revalidated — Labs API 40200 today).

What it does

SKILL.md frontmatter (fetched 2026-10-02):

• name: brand-guidelines
• description: Applies Anthropic's official brand colors and typography to any sort of artifact that may benefit from having Anthropic's look-and-feel. Use it when brand colors or style guidelines, visual formatting, or company design standards apply.
• license: Complete terms in LICENSE.txt → Apache-2.0, Copyright 2026 Anthropic, PBC. (LICENSE.txt)

Colors (compress): Dark #141413 · Light #faf9f5 · Mid Gray #b0aea5 · Light Gray #e8e6dc · accents Orange #d97757, Blue #6a9bcc, Green #788c5d.

Typography: Headings Poppins (Arial fallback) · Body Lora (Georgia fallback). Fonts work best when Poppins/Lora are pre-installed.

Features (skill body): smart font application (24pt+ headings), text styling, shape/accent color cycling through orange → blue → green.

Labs support (carry-forward only): claude brand guidelines 140 from labs-kw-2026-10-01 — not revalidated 2026-10-02 (Labs API 40200). Do not invent KD/vol beyond this row.

Install (Claude Code)

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills

Then Browse → anthropic-agent-skills → example-skills → Install, or direct:

/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills

Fact (marketplace.json, 2026-10-02): marketplace name anthropic-agent-skills; plugin example-skills; skill path ./skills/brand-guidelines. Installing pulls the whole example set (siblings include algorithmic-art, canvas-design, web-artifacts-builder, mcp-builder, frontend-design, skill-creator, and others).

[GAP]: marketplace has no standalone brand-guidelines plugin — do not invent /plugin install brand-guidelines@….

Walkthrough: add the marketplace.

When to use / when not

Use when you want Anthropic brand colors / typography / visual formatting on artifacts that need official Anthropic look-and-feel (slides, docs, styled outputs) — prefer the skill over guessing hex values from memory.

Do not:

• Presenting Anthropic’s kit as your company brand system without saying so — clarify intent first
• Algorithmic / generative p5.js art → live algorithmic-art radar — do not re-Intake
• Static PNG/PDF poster art → live canvas-design radar — do not re-Intake
• Complex React/Tailwind/shadcn claude.ai multi-component artifacts → live web-artifacts-builder radar — do not re-Intake
• Building MCP servers → live mcp-builder radar — do not re-Intake
• Re-Intake skill-creator / frontend-design / internal-comms / doc-coauthoring / claude-api (covered elsewhere — no 404 hrefs)

Limits + live pairings

• Demo/reference skill in the official repo; product behavior may differ.
• Ships with the full example-skills bundle — expect siblings, not a minimal single-skill package.
• Fonts best with Poppins/Lora pre-installed; Arial/Georgia fallbacks documented.
• Labs support carry-forward 140 only — not revalidated today.
• Not a substitute for canvas-design (static) · algorithmic-art (p5) · web-artifacts-builder (React artifacts).

Sources (2026-10-02): SKILL.md · LICENSE.txt · marketplace.json · repo anthropics/skills.

Ship reminder: MDX pillar: reviews only; install unit example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills.