# Brand and palette

The Gurbani Soul palette, typography and rules for the app, and how this wiki draws with the same tokens — every colour read from docs/brand/tokens.json.

- Page: <https://docs.gurbanisoul.com/brand/>
- Updated: 2026-10-12
- From the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji — Knowledge Base wiki. Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji is quoted verbatim, cited by Ang, and never altered.

---

**Gurbani Soul** is the app; this wiki and the website are separate, scholarly properties that
borrow its palette. Scripture is never branded: it is always *Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji · Ang N*.

- [The brand book](https://docs.gurbanisoul.com/brand/gurbani-soul-brand-book/) — the gold rule, palette, typography, mark, voice, accessibility and the gates (G1–G4)
- [The contrast report](https://docs.gurbanisoul.com/brand/contrast-report/) — every required pair, in all four legs, generated by `scripts/brand/contrast_report.py`
- [`tokens.json`](https://github.com/Algorythmos-AI/sggs-platform/blob/integration/docs/brand/tokens.json) — the source of truth: surfaces, Soul Gold, brand and status colours, light · dark · increased contrast

## The rules in one breath

- **Gold is a fill, never text.** The literal brand gold `#FFBC0D` measures 1.69:1 on white, so it
  appears only as `accentFill`, always with an `accent` border; text, icons and links use `accent`
  or `accentText`.
- **Red is fill-only** — badges, never text, never beside Gurmukhi — and never in a poster or a
  diagram on this wiki. Never a gold mark on a red square.
- **Gurmukhi is ink-coloured Sant Lipi**, never gold, never red. Headings use Source Serif 4.
- **Dark mode is warm ink**, not grey.

## The palette

On the rendered wiki this is every token in `tokens.json` — light and dark — with a swatch and its
contrast ratio, computed from the file at build. On GitHub, read [`tokens.json`](https://github.com/Algorythmos-AI/sggs-platform/blob/integration/docs/brand/tokens.json) and the
[contrast report](https://docs.gurbanisoul.com/brand/contrast-report/).

The wiki's own theme (`docs-site/src/styles/theme.css`) uses the same values for paper, card,
accent, accent text, accent fill and the status colours; the docs gates fail a pull request when
the two drift ([the docs gates](https://docs.gurbanisoul.com/contributing/docs-gates/)).

Three things about the wiki that touch the brand:

- **The reading layout** (`docs-site/src/styles/look.css`) takes its patterns from good help
  centres and its dress from this brand: a 17px body on a 44rem measure, serif headings, a summary
  under each title, callouts tinted with the status colours (each tint is its colour mixed 10%
  into paper, 14% into ink; a test recomputes them from `tokens.json` and checks ink at 4.5:1 and
  the rule at 3:1), and gold only as a fill. A quotation of scripture is the plainest thing on a
  page: no tint, no box.
- **Section tabs are quiet.** The row under the wiki's header is plain text; the current section
  is ink with a 2px accent rule under it — never a gold fill, never a pill.
- **On paper the body is serif.** On screen, headings are Source Serif 4 and the body is the
  system sans. A printed page and a downloaded PDF set the body in Source Serif 4 as well
  (`docs-site/src/styles/print.css`), so every machine embeds the same face; Gurmukhi is Sant Lipi
  in ink in both. Print is always the light palette, whatever the reader's theme.
- **The wiki links out to assistants; the product does not.** Each wiki page offers *Ask ChatGPT*
  and *Ask Claude* as plain outbound links with an instruction that holds the scripture rule. That
  is a convenience of the engineering wiki, not a feature of Gurbani Soul, which generates nothing:
  "verbatim, cited by Ang, never AI-invented" is unchanged
  ([ADR-0013](https://docs.gurbanisoul.com/adr/0013-outbound-assistant-links/)).