OverviewUpdated Oct 21, 2026
BRAND.md
How Highlight sounds, everywhere: product, marketing, support. Who it's for is PRODUCT.md.
Why we exist
As teams grow, people spend more of their time finding context, switching tools, repeating themselves and keeping everyone aligned. That friction crowds out the thinking and making that move ambitious ideas forward.
| Vision | A world where the most ambitious ideas are made real by a team of one or one thousand. |
| Mission | Build technology that absorbs the friction of work, so people can carve out time to dream. |
| Positioning | Highlight simplifies the complexity of work by understanding you and your team, connecting context across your tools, and getting your next step ready before you ask. |
Why it's believable: it works across the tools you already use, it builds on your team's decisions and history, it gets the next step ready before you ask, and it picks the right tool for the job while you keep the final say.
What we believe
- People make the extraordinary. AI makes average output abundant; the lasting advantage is people's judgment and craft.
- Powerful technology feels simple. The machinery goes under the hood.
- Shared understanding lets people do great things. Context that travels lets judgment travel.
- Technology amplifies, people decide. People see what it knows, choose what it can do, and have the final say.
Voice
| Attribute | Sounds | Not |
|---|---|---|
| Trustworthy | Candid, specific, clear about limits and control | Vague, evasive, falsely reassuring |
| Delightfully simple | Clear, intuitive, thoughtfully expressive | Childish, gimmicky, reductive |
| Empowering | Possibility-oriented, centered on human agency | Patronizing, exclusionary, replacement-led |
| Reliable | Consistent, useful, grounded | Grandiose, erratic, overpromising |
| Personal and personable | Natural, relevant, warm | Overfamiliar, anthropomorphic, generic |
| Straightforward | Direct, concise, action-oriented | Abrupt, cold, jargon-heavy |
- Lead with the answer, the action or the human outcome. Explain the technology after, if at all.
- Back claims with evidence, and make privacy, security and control easy to find.
- Make the person or team the protagonist, never the AI.
- Scale playfulness down as stakes rise. Warmth never softens permissions, data use, billing, errors or anything irreversible.
- The product doesn't speak in the first person, except to report its own action: "I pulled the last two updates on this, here's where it stands."
Never
| Never | For example, not |
|---|---|
| Frame Highlight as replacing people, or as a coworker or employee | "Replace your operations team with AI." |
| Gatekeep with insider language | "For teams that understand how to build advanced agentic workflows." |
| Use complexity to sound credible | "An intelligent agentic layer to power enterprise context." |
| Sound like any other software | "Transform productivity with an innovative platform built for the future of work." |
| Chase attention with hype | "We're better than all our competitors." |
| Trade clarity for charm when it matters | "We're about to peek at your inbox, no big deal!" |
Humor is for recognizable truths about work in low-stakes moments. Never at the person's expense, and never about an error, a bill, a permission or an incident.
Words
| Say | Instead of |
|---|---|
| People, teams | User, end user, employees ("user" only when the product role must be explicit) |
| Highlight | AI coworker, AI employee, virtual teammate |
| Ready for you, ready to review, prepares the next step | Takes over, acts autonomously |
| You decide, you have the final say | Let AI decide, set it and forget it |
| Make room, give time back | 10x productivity, do more with less |
Translate technology into familiar roles and visible outcomes: "workplace tool" before "intelligence layer". Define a technical term once, in context, only when the reader needs it. Use "agent" and "agentic" only for technical readers or a named product object. Don't use "single-player" or "multiplayer".
A proactive moment states the evidence and separates prepared from done:
Not: I noticed your launch is at risk, so I fixed the project plan for you.
But: Two launch tasks are blocked by decisions due this week. An updated plan is ready for your review.
By channel
One voice, small adjustments.
| Channel | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| Product | Concise and exact. Status, action, outcome; personality only in low-stakes moments. |
| A little more personal for welcome and milestones; direct for billing, security and recovery. | |
| Site and campaigns | A little more expansive, grounded in the mission. No empty grandeur. |
| Social | Conversational, wry, always with a point. No memes, ragebait or insider jokes. |
| Sales | Consultative and evidence-led, specific to the buyer. |
| Support | Empathetic and accountable: name the problem, own it, give the way out. |
| Community and events | Inviting and energetic, about the people in the room, not Highlight. |
| Partners and creators | Their voice, within our truths and guardrails. Disclose sponsorships. |
Describing Highlight
| Primary | AI for work |
| Warmer | AI assistant for you and your team |
| Product-led | AI that works across your tools |
| Five words | AI that absorbs the busywork. |
| Headline | Put your time and mental energy where it matters |
Short: Highlight is AI that captures context and decisions, then drafts follow-ups in the tools where your work happens, so your time and mental energy can go to the work that matters.
Long: Highlight is built to absorb the friction of work (organizing information, chasing updates, rebuilding context) so your team can do the thinking and making that move ambitious ideas forward. It works across your meetings, messages, documents and apps to connect context, keep track of progress and decisions, and prepare your next steps before you ask, while you and your judgment stay in control.
"360-degree assistant", "stack-agnostic" and "intelligence layer" are internal ideas; say them in plain words outside.