Design Standards

Set organization-wide design and branding guidelines that DarcyIQ applies to every conversation, agent, and workflow. Define your brand once with a Design.md, and Darcy uses it everywhere — no more manual formatting passes.

One source of truth for your brand: Upload your brand guidelines as a Design.md and every document, presentation, or piece of content Darcy generates will follow your standards automatically.

Overview

Design.md is an organization-wide setting written in Markdown that captures your design and branding requirements. DarcyIQ reads it whenever it produces output — chat responses, generated documents, presentations, charts, and agent deliverables — so the look, tone, and structure stay consistent with your brand.

Capability	Description
Organization-wide	One Design.md applies to every user, agent, and workflow in your organization
Markdown format	Plain Markdown — easy to write, easy to review, and easy to keep under change control
Applied automatically	Darcy respects the Design.md across chat, agents, and scheduled runs without prompting
Upload or create	Start with your existing brand guidelines or build a new one inside DarcyIQ

What to Include

A good Design.md captures everything Darcy needs to know to produce on-brand output. Common sections include:

Section	Examples
Brand Identity	Brand name, mission, audience, key value propositions
Voice & Tone	Formal vs. conversational, when to use each, words to avoid
Typography	Heading conventions, casing rules, formatting preferences
Color Palette	Primary, secondary, and accent colors used in charts and visuals
Document Structure	Standard sections for proposals, reports, briefs, etc.
Naming Conventions	Product names, capitalization, trademarks, abbreviations
Content Rules	Disclaimers, legal language, regional variations
Visual Guidelines	Chart styling preferences, image orientation, layout principles

The format is flexible — anything you'd put in a brand-guidelines document can go here. Use headers, lists, and examples liberally so Darcy can follow them precisely.

Setting Up Your Design.md

1

Open Organization Settings Navigate to Settings → Organization Management and find the Design Standards section.

2

Create or Upload

• Create from scratch — Start with a blank editor and write your guidelines directly

• Upload an existing file — Drag in a .md file with your current brand guidelines

3

Edit and Refine Use the built-in Markdown editor to adjust headings, add examples, and tune the language. The editor previews your content as you write.

4

Save Click Save to publish the Design.md to your organization. It takes effect immediately for all users, agents, and scheduled runs.

Pro Tip: Convert your existing brand guidelines PDF or doc into Markdown first, then paste it in. Darcy follows clearly structured rules better than long prose.

Where Design.md Applies

Once saved, Design.md is loaded automatically across DarcyIQ. You don't need to reference it in your prompts — it's always active.

Surface	How It's Used
Chat	Drives tone, formatting, and structure of Darcy's responses and artifacts
Agents	Layered on top of the agent's own role and instructions
Workflows	Applied to outputs generated by automated workflow runs
Scheduled Runs	Respected during background agent runs that produce reports or content
Generated Documents	Documents, presentations, and battlecards inherit your conventions

Editing and Versioning

Design.md is a living document — update it whenever your brand evolves.

• Edit anytime: Open the editor in Organization Management to make changes

• Immediate rollout: Saved changes apply to new conversations and runs as soon as they're saved

• Admin-only: Only organization administrators and owners can modify the Design.md

Best Practices

Writing Clear Guidelines

1. Use structure: Break rules into sections with clear headers — Darcy follows structured guidance more reliably than prose

2. Include examples: Show what good output looks like ("Use 'partner' not 'vendor' when describing relationships")

3. Be specific about style: "Headings in Title Case" beats "Use professional headings"

4. List forbidden patterns: Calling out what not to do is just as valuable as what to do

Keeping It Maintainable

Practice	Recommendation
Start small	Begin with the rules that matter most and expand over time
Review periodically	Treat Design.md like any brand asset — review quarterly
Version control	Keep a copy in your team's repo or DAM so you can track changes alongside other brand assets
Test with real outputs	After updates, ask Darcy to draft a representative deliverable to verify the rules are working

Pairing with Other Features

• Skills: Use Skills for task-specific instructions while Design.md governs brand-wide rules

• Blueprints: Pair Design.md with Blueprints so generated documents inherit both your template and your brand

• Agents: Build Agents without re-stating brand rules — Design.md already covers them

Pro Tip: If multiple sub-brands or product lines need different treatments, capture them as named sections inside the same Design.md. For example: "For Acme Cloud content, use blue accents. For Acme Industrial content, use orange accents."