Good news: Stylify's language is already in decent shape. The most important customer-facing rule — "never say users, say stylists" — is already locked in brand files. On the militaristic language front, most of what we use ("campaign," "strategy," "execute") is so normalized it's effectively neutral. There are a few terms worth cleaning up ("kill list" in DECISIONS.md, "shoot for the target" in casual usage), but this is a polish opportunity, not a crisis. The most interesting finding is about internal language: how we talk to and about our agents (Charlotte, Stitch, Pixel) may be worth being more intentional about — not because it affects anyone's feelings, but because it models the culture we want to build for when real humans join the team. The big actionable recommendation is to codify "stylists" more firmly across internal agent language, so the entire team (human and AI) defaults to the empathetic frame rather than the transactional one.
Jason's instinct is well-supported. Cognitive linguists Lakoff and Johnson established in their foundational work that metaphors aren't just decorative language — they structure thinking. When organizations adopt "Business is War" as their dominant metaphor, it subtly shapes what solutions feel possible (win/lose vs. collaborative options), who counts as the enemy (competitors, sometimes customers), and how failure gets framed (defeat vs. learning).
However, there's an important nuance: not all potentially militaristic terms are equally "active." Some words with military origins ("campaign," "strategy," "target," "execute") have been so thoroughly absorbed into business English that they no longer activate the war frame in most readers. Others ("kill list," "battle," "shoot for the target") still carry semantic punch because people consciously choose them for their aggressive energy.
The practical question for Stylify isn't "do we use any war words?" — it's "which of our terms are still semantically active vs. fully normalized, and do any of the active ones conflict with our brand values?"
For an organization whose brand is built on warmth, respect for stylists' time, and hospitality (see Values #3 and #7), aggressive-sounding internal language creates a subtle dissonance — even if no customer ever sees it.
| Term | Where It Appears | Verdict | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| campaign | Kit campaigns, email campaigns, marketing campaigns | Keep | Fully normalized. The marketing industry owns this word. Replacing it would create more confusion than clarity. |
| strategy / strategic | Business strategy, strategic analysis, Strategy page in app | Keep | Greek origin (strategos = general), now completely standard business English. No reader perceives this as militaristic. |
| target | Target audience, target user, target date | Keep | Standard. "Target audience" has been marketing vocabulary for 60+ years. The only version worth avoiding: "shoot for the target" (see below). |
| execute / execution | "Execute the plan," "execution phase," agent closing processes | Keep | Military origin but now entirely standard in project management. No one thinks "firing squad" when they read "execute the plan." |
| deploy | Stitch deploying code, migration deployments | Keep | Technical standard in software. Replacing "deploy" in engineering contexts would be bizarre. |
| pipeline | Demo video pipeline, sales pipeline, Pixel pipeline | Keep | Infrastructure metaphor, not military. Completely standard. |
| sprint | "Month 2 sprint," Agile references | Keep | Agile methodology standard. Athletic metaphor, not military. Fine. |
| capture | Quick Capture (Command Center), lead capture, capture leads | Keep | Very standard in marketing (lead capture) and product UX (quick capture). The connotation is "collect" not "imprison." |
| kill list | DECISIONS.md product management: "KILL list: Competitor Research, A/B Testing, Client Reporting" | Watch | Product management term (kill/keep/consider framework), used exclusively internally. Readers in that context understand it. But it's jarring next to Stylify's warm brand values. Simple alternative: "Parking Lot" or "Not Now" list. No urgency — but worth changing on next DECISIONS.md edit. |
| win / winning | Occasional internal use: "win customers," "winning strategy" | Watch | Zero-sum framing. Not a big deal, but when writing about earning customers' trust vs. "winning customers" — the former is slightly more aligned with our hospitality brand values. Worth being mindful, not urgent. |
| battle-tested / bulletproof | Not found in Stylify docs — flagging proactively | Watch | These occasionally appear in technical descriptions. If they come up, prefer "proven" or "hardened" instead. |
| shoot for the target | Jason's example — casual usage, not in any doc yet | Replace | This one is semantically active — "shoot" + "target" together still reads as violent. Jason instinctively felt this. Easy swap: "aim for" (same meaning, no violent connotation). |
| kill (as verb) | "Kill this feature," "kill the project" — occasional informal usage | Replace | When used as a standalone verb — "we're killing this" — it's jarring and negative. Prefer: "cut," "defer," "park," "sunset." Less dramatic, more constructive framing. |
Same meaning, zero violent connotation. "We're aiming for March 5 launch" lands identically. Use this going forward in all agent/doc language.
"Cut from v1" or "Parked features" or "Sunset" for winding down. Each is more constructive — it describes what happens rather than a violent act.
Recommend renaming to "Not Now List" or "Parking Lot" on the next DECISIONS.md edit. It's internal-only so there's no customer risk, but it sets the right internal tone. Low priority — don't edit just for this, but update it naturally when next touching that section.
This is the more interesting question. The research here is strong: using someone's professional identity as their customer label dramatically increases belonging and retention. Airbnb's shift from "renters" to "hosts" is the canonical example — it reframed the entire customer relationship from transactional to identity-based. When you're a "host," you're part of a community with a role; when you're a "user," you're a purchaser of a service.
Here's an honest assessment of all the reasonable options for Stylify:
Calls customers by their professional identity. It's what they are, not what they do with us. "Stylify is built for stylists" is a statement of belonging, not a product description.
Technical term appropriate in code, database schemas, admin dashboards. Never appropriate in marketing copy, in-app UX copy, or customer communications. Already codified in voice.md.
In the salon world, "clients" are the stylist's customers — not the stylist themselves. Using "clients" to mean our customers is confusing and slightly condescending. It's a different role entirely.
Once there are 50+ founding members, shifting to "our community of stylists" or "Stylify members" adds belonging language on top of professional identity. This is a layer to add later — not a replacement for "stylists," which stays as the core term.
The recommended clarification for agents: When writing about our customers in any context — internal docs, marketing, in-app copy, agent prompts — the default is "stylists" (or "our stylists" for warmth). "Users" is reserved strictly for technical/database contexts. This is already in voice.md but worth reinforcing as an explicit agent instruction.
This is the part that doesn't have much research yet — human-AI language patterns are a nascent field. But there's a logical case worth making.
The way you talk to and about your agents models the organizational culture for the humans who will eventually join Stylify. If Charlotte's CLAUDE.md reads like a military operations manual, that subtly shapes how future employees expect to be onboarded. If it reads like a team playbook, that shapes a different expectation.
Looking at Stylify's current agent language: it's actually quite good. The operational structure uses terms like "handover" (hospitality/relay metaphor), "briefing" (clear and functional), "session" (work/time metaphor), "inbox" (communication metaphor). None of these are particularly militaristic.
The one area worth reflecting on: how Jason frames requests to agents in daily usage. There's a real difference in the thinking pattern activated by "destroy this problem" vs. "solve this problem" — not because AI cares, but because the person writing the prompt often gets back what they implicitly asked for. Collaborative framing tends to produce more collaborative, thorough responses.
This doesn't need to be a policy change — just an awareness to carry. The agents don't have feelings about it, but the frame Jason builds for himself shapes how he approaches problems. Worth being intentional.
Stylify's external brand is built on warmth, respect for the stylist's craft and time, and the hospitality philosophy from Unreasonable Hospitality. The question Jason raised is really: are we practicing what we preach internally?
The honest audit: mostly yes. The brand files (voice.md, terminology.md, values.md) are warm, collaborative, and explicitly model the hospitality mindset. The DECISIONS.md and operational docs are more clinical and efficient — which is appropriate. You want your ops docs to be precise, not poetic.
The one genuine tension: the "KILL list" phrasing in DECISIONS.md reads jarring next to content about "unreasonable hospitality" and "bespoke gifts for advisors." It's a small thing that creates a momentary cognitive dissonance when you read the document straight through. That's the strongest case for the "Not Now List" rename — not that it harms anyone, but that consistency feels better.
Overall assessment: Stylify's language culture is healthy. Jason's instinct to check this is correct — language shapes culture, and it's worth being intentional. But the audit doesn't reveal a crisis; it reveals a generally well-calibrated organization with a few casual habits worth tightening.
One assumption made: That the Lakoff & Johnson metaphor-structures-thinking framework applies meaningfully to an organization where most "team members" are AI agents. The research was done on human cognition, not AI-human hybrid teams. The recommendation on agent language is based on logical extension, not empirical proof.
One uncertainty: Whether any of the "watch" terms (particularly "winning" and "battle") actually appear with enough frequency in Stylify's docs to matter. This audit was based on files read during this session. A full grep across all docs might surface more instances — or confirm the list is complete.