Verifiable, Considered, Durable: The Three-Word Test

What this means for you

Three words gate every piece of choco copy: verifiable, considered, durable. If a sentence does not earn at least one of them, it gets cut. The voice splits by audience (Linear-and-Raycast register for authors, brutalist-precise for readers, editorial weight-of-record for evaluators), but the three words hold across all three.

The pitch

Choco’s voice is a deliberate composite, mapped per audience. Cocoa the bean is the recurring editorial narrator on first-run, 404, and changelog asides; the lines are specific and earned, not filler. The emotional goal is the feeling of opening a well-printed reference book that turns out to also be a working compiler.

Who it’s for

Anyone writing a homepage line, a release note, an empty state, or a Cocoa narration moment.

Proof points

• Three-word personality fixed in the source: “verifiable, considered, durable” (choco-design-system/PRODUCT.md § Brand Personality)
• In-app variant tuned to “precise, attested, fast” for product surfaces (cho-co/web/PRODUCT.md)
• Positive references named: Linear and Raycast for devtool craft and keyboard ergonomics; Are.na and Bret Victor for document-as-artifact framing
• Cocoa the bean is gated to four moments only (CLI welcome, first-run, 404, changelog asides) and must be specific each time, never a flat sticker
• Anti-pattern hard line: if a generic mascot illustration would be interchangeable with Notion’s or Mailchimp’s, the surface has failed

mindmap
  root((Choco voice))
    Verifiable
      authors register
      Linear and Raycast
    Considered
      readers register
      brutalist precision
    Durable
      evaluators register
      Are.na adjacency
    Cocoa
      first-run only
      specific never filler