How to update brand guidelines across all your AI tools

Decide what the change affects

A new product name can be correct in the brand guide while an assistant keeps writing the old one. Its task may still contain earlier guidance, an uploaded PDF or a saved instruction. The guide changed; that task's inputs did not.

Start by writing the change precisely. Which rule or file is being replaced? When should new work use it? Does it affect drafts, scheduled work or existing published material? Those decisions tell you what needs refreshing.

Acme is fictional in the following example. It makes design software for product designers. The change renames Atlas to Atlas Pro and replaces yellow #FFD600 with #F2C94C. A useful change note would say:

Change: Atlas becomes Atlas Pro; yellow becomes #F2C94C.
Applies from: the next launch release.
Affected work: new launch material, current drafts and scheduled launch posts.
Existing published material: list the pages and assets that need revision.
Current source: link to the maintained guidance and replacement assets.

Use the timing and scope that fit your change; an internal naming clarification may need far less follow-up than replacing a public logo.

Find where the old guidance is used

Search for the old product name, colour values, tagline and filenames. Then inspect the places where your team runs brand work. Searchable repositories and shared drives will not reveal every private instruction or uploaded file.

Record the path by which each workflow receives guidance:

A link to a maintained document can reduce copying. Verify what the assistant reads and when it refreshes; the presence of a link alone does not establish freshness. Similarly, keeping a rule file in version control gives it a history, but another repository still needs its own update.

Migrations between assistant features belong in this inventory too. If instructions and files are carried into a replacement setup, inspect their contents after the move.

For every entry, decide whether to remove the copy, replace it with retrieval instructions or keep it as a file that needs updating. Keep a local file when the workflow consumes it directly, such as tokens compiled into a website. Record how it is regenerated and which version it came from.

Apply the change to the maintained brand

For recurring work, Rainbrand maintains brand context that connected agents and products can use. A Brief gives a task the relevant guidance and selected files. This lets you change the maintained brand and retrieve context for future work, while keeping your existing creation tools.

A brand edit is prepared before it changes the active guidance. You describe the update, inspect the proposal, refine it if needed, and apply or discard it. An authorised agent or API client can carry out those steps.

For the fictional change above:

Prepare an edit to Acme’s brand. Rename Atlas to Atlas Pro throughout the guidance and replace yellow #FFD600 with #F2C94C. Keep unrelated guidance unchanged. Show me the proposed guidance, identity and asset changes before applying the edit.

Check the proposal against the change note. If another edit was applied after this one was prepared, the stale edit cannot be applied. Prepare a new edit from the current brand.

Also check the Brand Library, the collection of assets available for brand work. Its additions and removals happen separately from guidance edits. If a logo or product photo has been retired, remove it from the Library so future Briefs and brand versions stop selecting it. Removal leaves the file itself in place and preserves the brand snapshots already published. Deleting a file is a separate action.

Refresh tasks and copies separately

After the edit is applied, request a new Brief for affected work. Inspect the changed rule and the selected files before resuming creation.

Refresh each kind of input separately:

• A new Brief requested after the update uses the revised guidance.
• A completed Brief records the version it was prepared from. Requesting its result again does not turn it into a Brief for the new version.
• An uploaded guide, pasted paragraph or local export needs a separate replacement.
• A draft, scheduled post or published page needs an actual content edit if it is in scope for the change.

Rainbrand does not rewrite other tools' settings or previously created work. A long-running conversation can still contain older guidance, so explicitly replace its task context. Starting a fresh conversation can help when old and new instructions are hard to disentangle, but the essential step is retrieving the current guidance.

A Brand Skill is a complete, versioned snapshot of the brand. Export it again for tools that need a folder. You can inspect that distinction in the TANNIN example package: it contains instructions, reference files and assets for a tea-room concept. A copy downloaded to a project remains unchanged when the maintained brand is edited.

Where a connection is available, replace saved brand details with an instruction to retrieve task context. Sharing guidance across assistants covers setting up that instruction.

Tell the people running affected work

A useful change message tells colleagues what they need to do. It should refer to the change note and the inventory rather than ask everyone to remember where they saved a guide.

For the fictional Acme launch:

For the next launch release, use Atlas Pro and yellow #F2C94C. The updated guidance is in our selected Acme brand. Request a fresh Brief for current launch work. Replace local exports and remove old brand text from saved instructions. Check scheduled launch posts against the change note before they go out, and record any remaining copy in the update inventory.

Adapt that message to the actual distribution of work. Name who will handle remaining tasks, such as replacing a shared template, so those files do not get missed.

Verify the guidance and the resulting work

Ask each affected workflow for context for a familiar task. First check whether the returned guidance contains the change. Then check whether the output uses it.

Those two checks point to different repairs. An old product name in the returned guidance suggests the wrong brand, reused context or an unrefreshed copy. A current Brief followed by an old name in the output suggests an instruction conflict or a failure to pass the guidance to the tool making the work.

For visual work, Rainbrand Review checks work against the brand and returns findings. Submit the finished image and expected copy following the guide. Use the findings to revise the output with your own tools; Review does not make the corrections automatically. Inspect uncertain findings rather than treating them as a publishing decision.

Keep the update record small enough to finish:

Change and effective date:
Maintained brand reference and new version:
Workflow / input location:
Action: retrieve again, replace, regenerate or remove
Affected rule or file checked:
Output checked:
Remaining issue and next action:
Checked by:

These are proposed verification steps. This article did not execute a rebrand or test a change across several assistants.

Make freshness explicit in an integration

In an embedded product, the copies may be in a cache or a prompt assembled when the customer first added a brand. Applying a brand edit will not change those stored inputs.

With Rainbrand, Get a brand returns the active Brand Skill ID. Get a Brief returns the version used for that task. Compare them before reusing context for work that should follow the current brand, and request a new Brief when the versions differ. Keep the old record with completed work.

Even when the versions match, check that the saved context fits the task and that its files are usable. A launch email and a packaging design can need different guidance from the same brand. Direct Library changes also affect asset selection for future Briefs, so refresh affected task context after those changes. The runtime retrieval guide covers reuse and failure handling.

Finish the inventory by resolving each affected workflow or naming its remaining action. Keep that inventory for the next update, including the local files you deliberately retained.