Voice

Summary

Domain-specific, outcome-first, confident on headlines and footnoted on edges — written for a salaried filer in India who has never spoken to a CA.

Why it matters

The audience knows §80C and Form 16; they don't know "next-gen platform" or "powerful tool". Marketing fluff doesn't survive contact with a tax artefact. At the same time, hedge-everywhere copy ("potential refund", "may apply", "verify with a CA") makes a deterministic engine feel unsure of itself and erodes the headline-as-promise. The voice rule reconciles both: speak the user's tax vocabulary directly, state the action or number, confine caveats to one disclosure footnote per page.

Implications

• No jargon without a plain-English fallback. "§80C" alone is jargon. "80C tax-saving investments (PPF, ELSS, LIC)" is readable.
• Short sentences, active voice. "Upload your statement" beats "Statement upload is required".
• Numbers in human form. "₹1.2 lakh" or "₹1,20,000" — not "₹120000". Dates as "12 Mar 2026" on surfaces.
• Error messages say what to do next, not what failed internally.
• Confident on the four-state hero and forward actions — no "potential", "may", "verify with a CA" hedges.
• Edge-case caveats go in one disclosure footnote per page.
• Evergreen — no version numbers, dates, "shipped 2026-XX", "Q2 release", "as of FY 20XX-YY" in user-facing copy. Exception: legal-page version stamps + tax-table verification flags.
• Reference deduction categories, never named products. "An ELSS fund", not "HDFC ELSS Direct".
• Applies to wireframes, product UI, marketing pages, emails, FAQ, support templates, CA-portal user copy.

Related

• copy-strings — verbatim canonical strings the voice produces
• audience-salaried-filer — who the voice is calibrated for
• scope-discipline — "no named products" lives in both rule sets
• read-only-review — confident voice mirrors deterministic engine

Sources

• .context/wiki/concepts/* § "Voice (carried into every user-facing string)"
• .context/wiki/concepts/* § "Hard rules" rules 10, 11
• CLAUDE.md § "Copy & language — MANDATORY"
• .claude/rules/source-of-truth.md § "Copy rule"