The 5 Documents Your AI Needs Before It Writes Anything for You

If you want AI to write like your business, it needs to know your business. That sounds obvious. Almost nobody does it.

The fix is five short documents. The first is an AI brand voice document, and it gets most of the attention. But voice alone isn't enough. The AI also needs your services, your customers' questions, your proof, and your rules. Together, these are the AI brand guidelines that turn a generic writer into one that sounds like it works for you.

You load them into a Claude or ChatGPT project once (here's how to set that up), and every blog post, social post, and email after that starts from them.

Why five and not one big file? Separate documents are easier to update, and it's easier to spot what's missing.

When your prices change, you open one file. When you add a town, you open one file. When the AI keeps using a phrase you hate, you add it to one list. A single 20-page brain dump never gets touched again after the first week.

Document 1: Your AI brand voice document

This tells the AI how you sound. Not "professional and friendly." Every business says that, and it gives the AI nothing to work with. You want specifics and, most of all, examples.

• Three to five words that describe you, plus what each one means in practice. "Blunt" might mean "tell people when a repair isn't worth it."
• Who you're talking to. Homeowners in their 40s? Property managers? Gym members who are just starting out?
• Sentence style. Short or long? Contractions? First person ("I" or "we")? Humor or straight?
• Do and don't examples. Write the same sentence two ways: one that sounds like you and one that doesn't.
• Three to five samples of your real writing. Emails, review replies, a page you wrote yourself, a transcript of how you explain a job on the phone.

The samples matter most. Showing the AI a few examples of what you want is called few-shot prompting, and Anthropic's own prompting guide recommends three to five well-chosen examples. The AI copies what it sees far better than what it's told.

Time: about an hour. Most of that is digging up good samples.

Document 2: Services, pricing ranges, and service areas

This is where AI makes things up if you don't stop it. Without real numbers, it writes "prices vary depending on several factors," which tells the reader nothing. Or worse, it invents a price.

• Every service you offer, one or two lines each, in plain words.
• Services you don't offer. This stops the AI from promising work you'll turn down.
• Price ranges you're comfortable publishing. Diagnostic fees, typical job ranges, what changes the price.
• Service area. Towns, suburbs, and zip codes, plus anywhere you won't drive.
• Hours, response times, warranties, financing, and anything else customers ask before booking.

If you're not comfortable publishing prices, say so in the document. "Never state a price. Say we'll quote it on site." That's a perfectly good rule.

Time: about 45 minutes, mostly copied from your website, invoices, and price sheet.

Document 3: Customer questions and objections, in their words

This is the document that makes your content rank. The questions customers ask you on the phone are the same ones they type into Google and ChatGPT. Write them the way customers say them, not the way you'd phrase them.

• The 10 to 20 questions you hear every week. "Why is my AC running but not cooling?" not "AC performance issues."
• The objections. "That seems expensive." "I'll just do it myself." "Can it wait until spring?"
• How you answer them, in a sentence or two each.
• What people misunderstand about your industry.
• The words they use. Customers say "gutter guards," not "gutter protection systems."

Ask whoever answers your phone to help. They know this list better than anyone. If you use a call tracking tool, scan a few weeks of call notes.

Time: about 45 minutes. It's also the document you'll add to most often.

Document 4: Your proof

Proof is what makes content believable. It's your experience, your process, and the honest reasons someone should pick you over the next name on the map.

• Experience. Years in business, licenses, certifications, training, the types of jobs you've done the most.
• Your process. What happens from the first call to the final walkthrough, step by step.
• What makes you different. Be specific. "We send photos of the problem before we quote" beats "great customer service."
• Real stories you're allowed to tell. No customer names, no made-up details. "We see this a lot in older homes in South County" is plenty.

Time: about 30 minutes.

Document 5: Rules

The rules document is short and does a lot of work. It's everything the AI should never do, plus the formatting you want every time.

• Banned words and phrases. Every cliche you're tired of reading. Add to it every time the AI annoys you.
• Formatting rules. Short paragraphs, no exclamation points, no long dashes, headings phrased as questions. Whatever your preference, write it down.
• Compliance. Licensing language, claims you can't legally make, anything your franchisor or industry requires.
• Accuracy rules. "Never invent a statistic, price, or review. If you don't know, leave a note for me."
• Calls to action. Your exact phone number, booking link, and how you want people to reach you.

Time: about 20 minutes to start. It grows on its own as you use it.

How long does it all take?

Here's how an afternoon usually breaks down when I sit down with an owner to build these. Your times will vary.

Illustrative. Roughly three and a half hours for a first version you'll keep improving.

You don't need to type it all, either. Record yourself talking through each section for ten minutes, get a transcript, and ask the AI to turn it into a clean document. Then read it and fix what's wrong.

What to do once they're done

Load all five into a project and test it. Hand it a real customer question and ask for a short post. Read the result out loud. If it doesn't sound like you, the voice document needs better samples. If it gets a fact wrong, the services document has a gap.

Then use a real process, not one big request. I lay out the step-by-step version in why "write me a blog post" gets you garbage.

How often should you update them?

A quick check once a quarter is enough for most businesses. Prices, service areas, and new services change the most. Customer questions should grow every time you hear a new one.

The rules list grows on its own. Any time the AI writes something that makes you wince, add it. After a couple of months, you'll notice you're editing a lot less.

These documents are also exactly what I build first with every new client. Once they exist, the content stops sounding like a robot and starts sounding like the owner, which is the whole point.