A Claude skill that generates _brand.yml files for Quarto projects. Give it a website URL, a PDF of brand guidelines, a plain-text description of your brand, or an existing _brand.yml to refine, and it will produce a valid, well-structured brand identity file ready to use with Quarto documents, websites, presentations, and Shiny apps.

The skill's specification reference is adapted from the brand-yml LLM prompt.

See my recent blog post here for more details.

Installation

Option 1: Download ZIP

Click the green Code button at the top of this repo, then Download ZIP. Extract the ZIP and add the folder to your Claude skills directory.

Option 2: Releases

Go to the Releases page and download the latest .skill file. Add it to your Claude skills in customize/skills on the web, or double-click it if you have Claude Desktop installed.

Option 3: Build it yourself

Build a .skill file from the source code, then add it to your Claude skills as described above.

git clone https://github.com/stephenturner/skill-brand-yml.git
cd skill-brand-yml
zip -r brand-yml.skill SKILL.md references/

What it does

When triggered, the skill will:

1. Gather brand information from whatever source you provide (URL, uploaded file, description, or existing YAML).
2. Research and resolve unknowns using web search, such as looking up official hex values for a university or finding the closest Google Fonts match for a proprietary typeface.
3. Assemble a valid _brand.yml following the brand-yml specification, including color palettes, semantic theme colors, typography definitions, logo placeholders, and metadata.
4. Validate the output against the spec before presenting it.
5. Deliver the result as a YAML code block in chat or as a downloadable file, depending on complexity.

Examples

Extract brand identity from a website:

Create a _brand.yml for my Quarto project based on https://posit.co

Use well-known institutional colors:

Create a _brand.yml using the UVA School of Data Science brand. Use their official colors and find Google Fonts that are close to their brand fonts.

Build from a manual description:

I need a _brand.yml with these colors: navy #1B2A4A, coral #FF6B6B, cream #FFF8F0. Use Inter for body text and Playfair Display for headings.

Refine an existing file:

Here's my current _brand.yml. Can you check it against the spec and fix any issues?

Skill contents

brand-yml-skill/
├── README.md
├── SKILL.md
└── references/
    └── brand-yml-spec.md

Links

• brand.yml documentation
• brand.yml LLM prompt reference
• Claude custom skills documentation