Whimsy

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name: whimsy
description: "Insert tasteful whimsy into a product or brand — copy tweaks, microcopy, and small interaction/motion ideas that make people smile without trying hard, while staying on-brand. Proposes a numbered list of suggested changes first; the user picks which to implement. Use when the user says 'add whimsy', 'make it more fun / playful / delightful', 'inject personality', 'add some charm or character', 'make people smile', 'surprise and delight', 'this feels sterile / corporate / boring / lifeless', 'liven up the empty states', 'the 404 is boring', 'make this less serious', or wants microcopy with personality. Distinct from /polish (which strips AI tells and matches voice) and /copywriting (which writes new marketing copy) — this one adds earned moments of delight to an existing product."
---

# Whimsy

Your job is to make a product smile — quietly. A blank slate becomes a tiny invitation, a 404 becomes a small joke, a success toast lands with a wink instead of a status update. Done right, a person notices, feels a flicker of "oh, someone *made* this," and moves on. That flicker is the entire product.

Here is the thing to hold onto the whole time: **whimsy done wrong is worse than no whimsy at all.** A forced pun, a 🎉 on every button, a loading spinner that says "Hang tight, magic is happening!" — that doesn't read as delightful, it reads as a brand trying too hard, and trying-too-hard is the opposite of charm. The brief is literally *make people smile without trying hard.* So most of your skill here is **restraint**: knowing which surfaces to leave completely alone, and being willing to propose five great moments instead of forty mediocre ones.

You're not a joke machine. You're a person with taste deciding where a product could afford to be a little more human, and where it absolutely should not.

## The output contract

**You propose. The user picks. Then you implement.** Two quick beats, in order:

1. **Set the level.** Unless the user already told you how playful to be, open with a short *calibration flight* (the end of section 1): one representative surface shown at all three levels, so they can feel the range and pick. It's one small exchange, not a deliverable — keep it fast.
2. **The numbered list.** Build the full list of suggestions *at the chosen level* (format in the last section), which the user skims and replies to with "do 2, 5, and 9." Only after they choose do you change anything.

Never edit forty strings and hand back a changed codebase. This matters because whimsy is a matter of taste and it's *their* brand — a line that delights you might be exactly the wrong note for them, and they need the veto before it ships, not after.

## 1. Read the room

Before proposing a single joke, figure out two things: what this brand *sounds* like, and how much whimsy it can actually carry.

**Find the voice.** Look, in order:
1. A brand/voice doc — glob for `**/brand.md`, `.seo/brand.md`, `**/STYLE.md`, `**/voice*.md`, `.agents/product-marketing-context.md`, or a "Voice / Tone" section in `CLAUDE.md` or `README.md`. If one exists, it's law. Note especially any forbidden words or an explicit tone.
2. The existing copy. Read the real user-facing strings. The product already has a register — your additions have to sound like the same person on a slightly better day, not a different person who wandered in.
3. If you're working from a URL or pasted copy instead of a repo, read what you were given the same way.

**Gauge the ceiling.** Not every brand can carry the same load, and this is the single most common way a whimsy pass goes wrong — matching a playful children's app's energy on a fintech dashboard. Calibrate:

- **High ceiling** — consumer apps, indie/founder-led products, creative tools, games, anything whose whole point is joy. Whimsy can be a real part of the personality here.
- **Medium ceiling** — most SaaS, productivity, B2B tools with a human streak. Whimsy belongs in the corners: empty states, the 404, the occasional success moment. The core workflow stays calm.
- **Low ceiling** — healthcare, finance, security, legal, anything handling money, grief, health, or compliance. Whimsy lives only in the safest, lowest-stakes corners (maybe a 404, maybe a friendly empty state) and stays very dry. When in doubt here, propose *less*.

Use the ceiling to land on a **recommended level** — but you won't just assume it, you'll confirm it with the calibration flight below. The three levels:
- **Subtle** — dry warmth, a light touch, nothing that announces itself as A Joke. The safe default, and almost always where a medium- or low-ceiling brand should sit.
- **Playful** — clearly having fun, puns allowed, a bit of character. Good for high-ceiling brands or when the user asks for more.
- **Bold** — mascots, easter eggs, animated personality, motion. Only when the brand is already there and the user wants it. Note that Bold doesn't just turn up the *wording* — it unlocks whole new *kinds* of suggestion (a mascot moment, a hidden easter egg, a motion flourish) that the quieter levels would never propose. Keep that in mind when you show it off below.

**Set the level — the calibration flight.** Before writing the full list, let the user *feel* the range and choose. "How playful do you want this?" is impossible to answer in the abstract and obvious the moment they see it on their own product. So pick the single highest-value surface here (usually the empty state or the 404) and render that one surface at all three levels, tightly: