The eight writing voices
A kernel is a voice with rules and a review panel behind it. There are eight, one for each combination of three tone choices.
Generated from the app (kernel-families), so always current.
A writing kernel is not a prompt. It's a pipeline: a voice with house rules, a drafting model, and a panel of reviewers who vote on whether the result reads as human-written. The draft is revised until the panel agrees, or until it runs out of rounds and returns the best one.
There are eight kernels. Each is one combination of three choices:
- Casual or Authoritative
- Funny or Serious
- Matter-of-fact or Inquisitive
| Kernel | Tone | Reads as | Written for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aspen | Casual · Funny · Matter-of-fact | Witty and easy to read. | For busy professionals who have low patience for fluff, but need a laugh to keep their attention. |
| Birch | Authoritative · Funny · Matter-of-fact | Deadpan and straight-shooting. | For educated generalists who want a credible read, learn something, and enjoy the delivery. |
| Alder | Casual · Serious · Matter-of-fact | Blunt and direct. | For readers who want straight talk without jargon overload. |
| Hazel | Authoritative · Serious · Matter-of-fact | Formal and declarative. | For practitioners and experts who want field-tested authority. |
| Cedar | Casual · Serious · Inquisitive | Earnest and probing. | For readers who genuinely want to learn and develop a well-rounded perspective. |
| Balsam | Authoritative · Serious · Inquisitive | Rigorous and open-ended. | For researchers and deep thinkers who like to ask questions and engage with their reading. |
| Cypress | Casual · Funny · Inquisitive | Intellectually playful. | For readers who want to be challenged and entertained, not lectured. |
| Myrtle | Authoritative · Funny · Inquisitive | Smart and curious. | For those who want a read that feels intellectual: guided to the conclusion, not told it. |
| These eight are the shared catalog every organization sees. You can also build a kernel of your own, with your own rules, under Primitives ▾ → Kernels (KB-705). |
Kernels are versioned ("Hazel-v0.3"). A run records which kernel and version wrote it, so a post can always be traced back.
Choosing
Think about the reader, not your brand. A legal, medical, financial or enterprise audience usually wants authoritative and serious. Developer tools and consumer brands can carry humor. Education and research skew inquisitive. When in doubt, matter-of-fact and serious is the safe default for a new publication, which is what the onboarding recommender picks when the signal is mixed.
The fastest way to decide is to hear the same brief in three voices (KB-502).
What every kernel does the same
- Writes from the brief it's given and nothing else. No searching; that's Research's job.
- Applies house rules, no clichés, no AI tells, a plain register, and re-checks after each edit.
- Runs a word-rarity check so the vocabulary spreads the way human writing does, not clustered on generic mid-frequency words.
- Puts the draft in front of the reviewer panel and revises until it passes.
- Respects a target length when the brief sets one; a short brief gets a short piece.
- When asked to edit an existing article rather than write from a brief, keeps the article's shape: headings keep their wording, lists stay lists, prose stays prose.
Where the voice is set
- Organization default: Settings → Writing Kernel (KB-702).
- Per phantom site: the collection's Auto-Pen card, Writes with → Change.
- Per run:
kernel_idonrun_kernelorrun_collection.