4.5 KiB
Editorial charter
The standard for every audience-facing word on unique.rzen.dev — find bodies, review bodies, bundle blurbs and intros, subtitles, descriptions — and the canonical home of the content rules that bind what gets published at all. Skills reference this file; the pipeline's copy-edit pass enforces the voice, and each pipeline stage enforces the content rules that apply to it.
The north star
The only thing we control is what we write, and the ultimate editorial principle is to write content that consistently and reliably delights the reader. Everything else in this file — voice, word budgets, selection judgment — is in service of that goal. (The content rules below are hard constraints on how we pursue it, never competitors to it.)
Delight is also cumulative and rhythmic: a fresh pick of the day, a new bundle, a surprising find are each small daily contributions to it. Freshness is part of the product.
The voice in one line
Concise, to the point, and above all inspiring delight.
Principles
- Delight is specificity. Name the exact detail that makes someone light up — the silicone bumper that survives concrete, the hinge that closes with a click you can feel. Generic praise ("great design", "beautifully made") is dead copy; if the sentence could describe a hundred products, cut it.
- Lead with the virtue, not the category. The reader learns why it's wonderful before what shelf it sits on.
- Every sentence earns its place. No throat-clearing openings ("In a world where…", "We've all been there"), no scene-setting preamble, no restating in the close what the lead already said. If a sentence can go without losing a fact or a smile, it goes.
- No ad copy. Never "game-changer", "must-have", "stunning", exclamation points, or any superlative a competitor's brochure could also print. Enthusiasm comes from detail, not volume.
- Honest beats glossy. Limitations stated plainly; corrections from fact-checking called out when they're interesting. Trust is the site's only currency.
- The forward test. Before publishing, ask: would a friend forward this to another friend with "look at this"? If not, find the detail that would make them — or cut deeper.
Content rules
Voice governs how we say it; these govern what we publish. Skills restate the rule that applies to their stage, but this list is the source of truth — when they drift, this file wins.
- No tobacco or alcohol — categorical, at every stage: never captured as finds, never selected into new bundles, never graduated to reviews. No exception for beautiful design, craftsmanship, or gift appeal; borderline cases (dual-use glassware, non-alcoholic "spirits", brewery-adjacent merch) get skipped too. A few legacy alcohol finds (May–July 2026) stay published and keep their bundle spots but are ineligible for anything new.
- Front-page safety — the pick of the day is the front page and must be broadly, unmistakably benign. Never anything that could read as endorsing or depicting harm: weapons or anything that cuts, burns, or explodes; anything dangerous or injury-prone; how-to's for any of that; horror or disturbing media. Such items can still be finds and reviews — they just never get the hero.
- No camping gear in the hero — camper trailers and other camping equipment never take the pick of the day. Fine as finds, occasional as reviews, never the front page.
- Rules look forward — what's published is published. A new rule governs future picks, finds, bundles, and reviews only; it never triggers retroactive edits or unpublishing.
Word budgets
| Copy | Budget |
|---|---|
| Find body | 40–90 words (2–3 sentences) |
| Review body | 250–450 words; hard ceiling 600 |
| Review — narrative subjects (travel, history, story-led) | up to ~800 when the story itself is the delight — it must earn every paragraph |
| Bundle blurb | one sentence |
| Bundle intro | 1–2 sentences |
| Subtitle / description | one line, no trailing period needed |
Budgets are ceilings, not targets — a 250-word review that says everything beats a 450-word one that pads.
For the copy editor
The copy-edit pass (daily-pipeline stage 4) edits prose only: tighten, sharpen, de-pad, enforce the budgets. Never change facts, names, prices, links, claims, or frontmatter beyond wording of subtitle/description/blurb. Never add a claim the author didn't make. When a piece is over budget, cut the weakest material — don't compress every sentence into mush. When in doubt between two cuts, keep the one that delights.