build-a-brand

build-a-brand is a standalone brand-identity workflow that turns any input — an idea, a website, a list of reference brands, product photos, or an existing brand to refresh — into a usable brand identity covering strategy, identity, design, and copy. Its default output is a fast "quick brand" deliverable finishable in minutes, with a full 14-16-page brand guidelines PDF available as an opt-in upgrade. It targets founder-kit users who want a practical brand without a full commerce launch (no Shopify, product listings, or social posting).

The skill is local-first: it keeps deterministic production work — workspace setup, font downloads, image compression, transparent-background cleanup, favicon tests, HTML/CSS page builds, PDF rendering, QA screenshots, logo assembly, and zip packaging — on the user's machine, and uses the cloud only for paid image generation (gpt-image-2 for symbols, mood images, photography, illustration, textures) and source research. It carries detailed operational guidance drawn from real failures: downsampling generated PNGs to small local JPEGs before embedding to avoid multi-megabyte PDFs and asset-fetch timeouts, baking color grades into images rather than using CSS filters that force lossless rasterization, generating imagery in parallel batches of four, and saving deliverables to the Desktop or working directory rather than uploading by default. Before any paid MCP call it calls `identity_balance` and surfaces a cost-transparency gate with explicit credit and dollar estimates.

It relies on Pika MCP tools (generate_image, task_status, identity_balance) and reference files that define positioning boards, the logo pipeline, full guidelines layout, and a machine-readable brand.md template. Use cases include creating a brand from scratch, rebranding, or producing a full brand book. The main sensitivity is paid credit consumption, which the skill gates transparently before spending.