Website tagline

The tagline is the short line under the logo. Someone who sees only the logo and that line should know what the business is there for. Positioning (website-positioning, POSITIONING.md) decides what the site claims; this skill finds the few words that carry it, together with the owner. Optional, never part of the default build.

The governing rule: the tagline says nothing POSITIONING.md does not already say. On any conflict, positioning wins and the tagline is rewritten.

The work has four moves, in this order: lead with purpose (§2), show six to eight variations (§3), ask the owner for a direction (§4), ask for feedback and refine until one line is picked (§5). The owner decides at every step; the assistant proposes.

Explain it first (what to say to the owner)

Say how it will go before the first line, so the owner knows they will choose and does not wait to be handed "the answer". Use the language the owner writes in (per new-website §1), roughly:

A tagline is the short line under your logo. In a few words it says what you are there for. We start from your purpose, not from clever wording. I will show you six to eight lines in a few different directions. You tell me which direction sounds like you, I work on that one, and you tell me what to change until one line is right. Nothing goes on the site until you say so, and it does not change your positioning.

0. When it runs

• When the owner asks ("we need a tagline", "what goes under the logo", "a Claim for the site"), on a new site or an existing one.
• Prerequisite: a filled POSITIONING.md (repo root, or docs/ on a site that keeps its strategy documents there; look in both). If it is missing or half-filled, run website-positioning first. A tagline written before the positioning is a guess with good rhythm.
• Also read, when present: STORY.md (the character's want, the success lines and the controlling idea are the closest neighbours of a tagline) and any voice-of-customer notes from customer-research. Look there first for words a customer already said.

1. Outputs

• TAGLINE.md (from this skill's templates/tagline.md), next to POSITIONING.md: the purpose sentence, the chosen line, what the owner said about direction and wording, the lines the owner liked but did not pick, and the other lines shown, so a later session does not propose those again.
• SITE.tagline in src/config.ts: the chosen line, verbatim.
• The line on the site, under the logo, read from SITE.tagline (§6).
• Optional tests/tagline.spec.ts (from templates/tagline.spec.ts), see §7.

Explicitly not touched: POSITIONING.md, tests/positioning.spec.ts, any <title> or <h1>, and STORY.md. The positioning term stays where the positioning test expects it; the tagline is an extra line, not a replacement.

2. Lead with purpose

Before any tagline, write the purpose sentence: what the business is there to do for its customer, in one plain sentence.

We are here so that [the customer, POSITIONING.md §4] can [the value they get, §3].

Show it to the owner and ask: "Is this what you are here for? If not, say it in your own words." Their wording wins. If their answer changes who it is for or what they get, that is a positioning change: fix POSITIONING.md via website-positioning, then come back. Do not write a single candidate until the owner has agreed to the sentence.

Every candidate must then lead with that purpose: it says what the business is for. Three kinds of line fail this, however good they sound:

Fails because it leads with	Example
the category (what the business is)	"Bookkeeping services since 2019"
adjectives (how it would like to be seen)	"Reliable. Personal. Digital."
the company itself	"We love numbers"

The test for each line: read the purpose sentence, then the line. Is the line a shorter way of saying it? If it could sit unchanged under the logo of a business with a different purpose, rewrite it.

3. Round one: six to eight variations

Write six to eight lines, never fewer and never more: fewer gives the owner too little to compare, more is too long a list to compare at all. Spread them over three or four directions, two or three lines each, so that the owner's choice of direction means something. Every direction leads with purpose; they differ in which side of it they show:

Direction	The line says	Leans on POSITIONING.md
The outcome	what the customer has afterwards	§3 Value
The customer	who it is for, in their own words	§4 Target customer
The contrast	what they can stop doing or putting up with	§1 Competitive alternatives (the situation, never a named competitor)
The promise	the one thing they can count on	§2 Unique attributes + §3 Proof

Rules for every line:

• Short enough for its place. At most eight words and 50 characters. It has to fit under a logo on a phone.
• Reads after the name. Say "[Name]. [Line]." aloud. If it stumbles, or repeats a word from the name, rewrite it.
• No new claim. Each line names the POSITIONING.md section it leans on. A number, a superlative or an "every" needs its proof in §3; without proof, the line goes. A record is not a promise: a line may say what the proof says ("on time since 2019"), not promise it for the future ("always on time").
• Plain words the customer uses. No word the owner would not say to a customer across a table.
• Passes the site's tone rules. Read the rules for the site's language in tests/_helpers.ts and check every line against them before showing it: where the site shows the line, it sits on every page. In English that means no em dash, no contraction ("don't", "we'll", "it's") and none of the listed buzzwords. On a site without that file, keep to those three rules.
• Not a second headline. It is not the <title>, not the <h1> and not the story one-liner; it may agree with the controlling idea in STORY.md and must never contradict it.
• Non-English builds: write native lines. Do not translate an English tagline.

Show the round to the owner as a plain numbered list, grouped under the directions in everyday words, with no table and no section numbers. The trace to POSITIONING.md goes into TAGLINE.md, not into the chat.

Worked example (a made-up business; the evals use a different one on purpose, so reuse the shape, not the words):

• From POSITIONING.md: target = freelancers who dread the quarterly tax return; alternatives = doing the books themselves at night, a large accountancy firm; unique attributes = a fixed monthly price, one named contact; proof = every return filed on time since 2019.

• Purpose sentence, agreed by the owner: "We are here so that freelancers can stop worrying about their books and get on with their work."

• Round one, as the owner sees it:

  What you have afterwards

  1. Your books done. Your evenings back.
  2. Tax season without the dread.

  Who it is for 3. Work for yourself, not for your books. 4. For freelancers who would rather be working.

  What you can stop doing 5. No more Sunday-night spreadsheets. 6. Stop doing your books at midnight.

  What you can count on 7. Deadlines are our worry, not yours. 8. One person who knows your books.

  Line 7 does not say "Every return on time": the proof is a record since 2019, and a record is not a promise.

4. Ask the owner for a direction

Do not ask for the winner yet. Ask for a direction:

Which of these sounds most like you? You do not have to choose the final line yet. Tell me the one or two you are drawn to and what you like about them. If none fits, tell me what is missing.

Use a structured user-input tool if the platform offers one (Claude Code's AskUserQuestion, with the three or four directions as the options and the free answer for "none of these"), otherwise ask in chat. Then:

• One direction named → round two stays inside it.
• Two lines from different directions → round two combines what the owner liked about each. Ask what they liked if they did not say.
• "None" → ask what is missing, and check the purpose sentence again before writing more lines. After a whole round of misses, suspect the purpose before the wording.
• No answer → stop. Change nothing on the site.

A round is one list shown to the owner. Round one is the six to eight lines; whatever is shown next is round two, also after a "none"; there are at most three.

Round two: four to six new lines in that direction. Keep any line or phrase the owner liked word for word, and drop every word they pushed back on. A line the owner liked as a whole stays in the running until the owner drops it or picks a line: show it again, unchanged, beside the new lines of every later round. It does not count towards their number. Only the owner drops a line; not mentioning it is not dropping it.

Worked example, continued:

• The owner answers: "1 and 5. 'Evenings back' is what my clients say to me, and the Sunday-night spreadsheet is exactly their week. Not 2: 'dread' is too dark for us."

• Two lines from different directions, so round two combines them. Lines 1 and 5 stay in the running. Every new line is built from the words the owner liked, and none says "dread":

  Still in the running

  • Your books done. Your evenings back.
  • No more Sunday-night spreadsheets.

  New

  1. No Sunday-night spreadsheets. Your evenings back.
  2. Your evenings back from the spreadsheet.
  3. Evenings back. Spreadsheets gone.
  4. Your books done. Your Sunday nights back.

5. Ask for feedback, refine, pick one

After round two, and again after round three, ask for feedback with questions the owner can answer, never "what do you think?":

Read each line aloud after your business name. Which words would you really say to a customer? Which word feels off? Is anything too bold, too modest or too long?

Then change only what the feedback names and show round three: at most four new lines. There is no fourth round. The work ends in one of three ways:

• The owner picks one line. Before it is final, search the exact line in quotation marks; if you cannot search the web, say that the line was not checked. If another business in the same market already uses it, say so and ask the owner to pick again from the lines shown, or go on to the next round if one is left. This is a courtesy search, not a trademark check; say that too, and leave the legal question to the owner.
• Three rounds without a pick. Stop and say so plainly. Record what was shown (§6), then go back to the purpose sentence (§2), and to website-positioning if the owner no longer agrees with it.
• The owner decides against a tagline. A valid answer; a site does not need one. Record it (§6) and change nothing else.

Only the owner picks. Never choose for them, and never set a line because the conversation ended.

Worked example, the end:

• Asked the three feedback questions, the owner says: "The fourth new one is nearly it. I would say 'Sunday evenings', not 'Sunday nights'. Can it be shorter? 'Gone' in the third sounds like an advert. And you can drop 'No more Sunday-night spreadsheets'."

• Only those things change. That line leaves the list because the owner dropped it; the other liked line stays, although the owner did not mention it:

  Still in the running

  • Your books done. Your evenings back.

  New

  1. Your books done. Your Sunday evenings back.
  2. Books done. Sunday evenings back.

• The owner picks new line 1: "The short one sounds like a telegram." A search for the exact line in quotation marks finds no other bookkeeper using it, and the owner is told that this was a courtesy search, not a trademark check.

• TAGLINE.md records the line, "evenings back" as words to keep, "dread" and "gone" as words to avoid, the one line that was liked but not picked, and the twelve other lines shown. SITE.tagline gets the line verbatim.

6. Record it and place it

If the owner declined, or three rounds ended without a pick: fill TAGLINE.md (the purpose sentence, "No tagline" or "No tagline yet", the lines that were shown) and do item 5 of the list below. Skip items 2 to 4; SITE.tagline and the header stay as they are.

1. TAGLINE.md: copy templates/tagline.md next to POSITIONING.md and fill it: the purpose sentence, the chosen line with its direction and the section it leans on, the owner's direction and feedback in their words, the lines liked but not picked, and every other line shown.
2. SITE.tagline in src/config.ts: the chosen line, verbatim.
3. Under the logo. Where the site's header shows the logo or the name, add the line beneath it as a <p> that reads SITE.tagline. Never type the line a second time, and never make it a heading: the page keeps its one <h1>. A site with no logo or name in its header yet skips this item only: tell the owner the line is stored and not shown yet. Items 4 and 5 still apply. A site that uses the guard (§7) sets its selector to this element.
4. Run the site's tests (npm test). The accessibility test must be green in light and dark, and the tone and positioning tests must still be green. Where the site shows the line, also look at it yourself in the header, in both themes and at phone width: a test reports only what it could measure.
5. Record the choice in the project README, next to the decision-interview answers where the README has them, otherwise where the project keeps its decisions ("tagline: see TAGLINE.md", "tagline: declined" or "tagline: none picked yet"), so a later session knows the decision.

7. tagline.spec.ts: the opt-in guard

Copy this skill's templates/tagline.spec.ts into the site's tests/ once the site shows the line, and set CONFIG.selector to the element that shows it (for example header .tagline). It lives here rather than in the new-website Astro overlay because a fresh scaffold shows no tagline. It reads SITE.tagline from src/config.ts, as the site's other specs do.

assertion	the bug it catches
The selected element is there once, is visible, and its text is SITE.tagline word for word	the line edited in the page and not in the config, or shown twice
That element is a <p>, not a heading and not inside one	the tagline set as a second headline, which breaks the page's heading outline
No file under src/ except config.ts contains the line, also when the copy is written with an escaped quote or with character references (&#39;, &rsquo;), which the browser decodes for the test	the line typed a second time (a footer, a card, the home page copy), which drifts the next time it changes
SITE.tagline is not empty, is not the starter's placeholder, and keeps to eight words and 50 characters	a later edit in the config that no longer fits under a logo

The search for a second copy counts the line only where it stands on its own, not inside a longer word. The test covers one line, SITE.tagline; a site that shows a different tagline per language is outside what it checks.

Every test skips with a stated reason while CONFIG.selector is empty, so an unconfigured copy reports "not applicable". A site that stores the line and does not show it yet does not need the file. The suite's template-tests.yml runs this template in its own job (tagline-skill): unconfigured, on a correct site, and on each of the mistakes above.

8. Gotchas

• A line the assistant likes is not a line the owner would say. When they disagree, the owner is right.
• Rhyme, puns and alliteration are decoration. A plain line that says the purpose beats a clever one that needs explaining.
• Do not show more than eight lines "to be safe", and do not show three to save time. The count is the method.
• Rerun this skill when the positioning changes, not when the line feels old.
• Answer the question that was asked. "Is this line too long?" wants a yes or no and a reason, not a new round.

Boundaries (do not duplicate)

• Positioning, the per-page spine → website-positioning.
• The home page as the customer's story, the one-liner, the controlling idea → website-story.
• Tone of voice, EEAT → website-content-guide.
• Page headlines and body copy → copywriting (it also answers to "tagline"; the line under the logo is this skill's).

Done means

The owner agreed to the purpose sentence, saw six to eight lines in three or four directions, named a direction, gave feedback, and picked one line themselves. TAGLINE.md is filled, SITE.tagline holds the line verbatim, the line shows under the logo where the site has one, and the site's tests are green, with tagline.spec.ts configured among them if the site adopted it. If the owner declined, or no line was picked in three rounds: TAGLINE.md and the project README say so, and nothing else changed.