Brand Context Protocol vs Guidelines

Brand Context Protocol (BCP) converts brand guidelines into structured JSON that tools, AI agents, and platforms can read and enforce. It checks content for tone, visuals, claims, and policies before publication. Brand X-Ray audits a website and public social signals, then reports coherence across visual, verbal, and presence dimensions without requiring signup for a scan. Published changes receive versions and changelogs, with rollback to earlier versions. API keys can be scoped by permissions and brand sections, monitored by usage, and revoked. Through MCP clients, BCP exposes brand-context retrieval, text evaluation and rewriting, design evaluation, image analysis, and document evaluation. Its Global Policy Library covers more than 38 marketing tactics and 15 claim types, with allow, warn, escalate, or block enforcement. Listed connections include Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Slack, Zendesk, and Canva; the Canva app is in review with early access available. BCP is a free open standard built by Aryabhatta Labs. Scraped website text is sent to OpenAI for analysis, scan results are retained indefinitely, and deletion can be requested by email.

Guidelines is a web platform for creating and publishing interactive brand guides that teams can manage together. Guides can collect logos, colors, typography, icons, and downloadable files in a searchable place. Quick Start uses uploaded logos, selected colors, and fonts to prepare an initial guide draft, while collaborators can be invited to design and manage guidelines. Guides can be shared publicly, password-protected, or restricted through account-based authentication. Integrations include Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, Sketch, Tailwind, CSS Variables, ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, and Okta. The ChatGPT connector uses MCP and OAuth; the support page says it reads brand data without write access. The Free plan costs nothing and includes one public guide, one editor, seven published pages, and 100MB of storage. Studio costs $15 a month, billed per editor per month; Enterprise costs $40 a month, also billed per editor per month, and additional SSO fees may apply per monthly active SSO user. Both paid plans offer broader guide management, with Enterprise adding features including SSO, version history, and localization.