Rules is the legacy guardrail system. New organizations start with Skills, which is the evolution of Rules and the recommended approach for encoding organizational knowledge going forward. If your organization was set up before Skills was available, your existing rules remain fully active — nothing changes unless you choose to transition.
Rules Manager
Access Rules from Rules & Skills in the left sidebar, then select the Rules tab.
The Rules Manager shows all active rules across your organization, organized by:
- Scope: Organization-wide or workspace-specific
- Type: Brand, Compliance, Accessibility, SEO, Custom
- Status: Active or Inactive
- Agent assignment: Which agents the rule applies to
Adding a rule
From scratch
From a template
- Click New Rule in the Rules Manager
- Enter a rule name and description
- Write the rule content — describe the standard every output must meet
- Set the scope (Organization or Workspace)
- Assign to relevant agents
- Set status to Active
- Save
Gradial provides starter templates for common rule types:
- Click New Rule → From Template
- Browse templates by category (Brand, Compliance, Accessibility, SEO)
- Select a template
- Customize for your organization
- Activate
Rule types
| Type | Use for |
|---|
| Brand | Voice, tone, terminology, style standards — what must be true of every piece of content |
| Compliance | Legal, regulatory, and disclosure requirements |
| Accessibility | WCAG compliance standards and accessibility requirements |
| SEO | Metadata requirements, heading structure, keyword standards |
| Custom | Organization-specific standards that don’t fit a standard category |
Agent assignment
By default, rules apply to all agents. To restrict a rule to specific agents:
- Open the rule in the Rules Manager
- Go to Agent Assignment
- Toggle off any agents that shouldn’t apply this rule
- Save
Use agent-specific assignment when a standard only applies to certain task types — for example, an email-specific compliance rule that shouldn’t run on web content tasks.
Transitioning from Rules to Skills
Rules and Skills serve different layers of the Marketing Brain:
- Rules define the floor — standards every output must clear
- Skills build the ceiling — expertise that makes outputs excellent
If you have rules that describe how to do something well (rather than a standard every output must meet), those are good candidates to migrate into Skills.
To identify candidates:
- Look for rules that are long and process-oriented
- Look for rules with conditional logic (“if the page is a product page, then…”)
- Look for rules that describe approach, structure, or workflow
You don’t need to delete rules to add skills. Rules and Skills work together — rules handle the non-negotiables, skills handle the expertise.
Contact your Gradial account team if you’d like guidance on transitioning your rules library to a Skills-first approach.
