Four Things erid.tech Refuses to Be

What this means for you

PRODUCT.md lists four things erid.tech will not look or feel like. The list is not aspirational; it is a working filter. If a draft drifts toward any of the four, the draft is wrong.

The pitch

Refused: generic infra and dev-tooling landings (hero plus three-column features plus customer-logo wall plus waitlist). Refused: cyberpunk neon-on-black sci-fi (glowing grids, terminal-green type, particle starfields). Refused: personal-blog minimalism (lone serif headline on white, single column, “Made with care” footer). Refused: corporate brand-system showcases (Pentagram-style oversized type as graphic). The reference points are Stripe Press for editorial restraint and NASA mission-control transcripts for low-affect operator register.

Who it’s for

A reviewer or editor checking whether a new surface honours the brand. The four refusals make most rejection calls quick.

Proof points

• Four named anti-references in PRODUCT.md, each with a concrete shape: SaaS landing pattern, cyberpunk sci-fi, personal-blog minimalism, corporate brand-system showcase
• Four reference lanes applied in combination: Stripe Press and Are.na for editorial restraint, Linear and Raycast for low-affect operator register, NASA mission-control transcripts for clinical voice, Project Hail Mary canon for content texture
• BRAND_ASSETS.md anti-reference checklist is 12 items long and applied to every image-gen prompt before it ships, including: no gradient text, no glassmorphism on static panels, no big-number hero metric, no identical card grid, no #000000 or #FFFFFF, no celebratory empty states
• Hero image prompt rejects “smiling employee” and “blue-and-white office stock photo” by name

quadrantChart
  title Where erid sits between four refused registers
  x-axis Loud --> Quiet
  y-axis Generic --> Distinct
  quadrant-1 erid target
  quadrant-2 Personal-blog minimalism
  quadrant-3 SaaS infra landing
  quadrant-4 Cyberpunk sci-fi
  SaaS landing template: [0.32, 0.18]
  Cyberpunk neon: [0.18, 0.42]
  Personal blog serif: [0.78, 0.35]
  Pentagram showcase: [0.25, 0.78]
  erid apex: [0.85, 0.88]