Appearance
The content-type master list — types ratified · the family layer under reconciliation
STATUS: TYPES RATIFIED (10 August 2026) · FAMILY LAYER RE-OPENED (13 August 2026). Joe ratified every individual content type name by name, and those types stand. The family groupings above them do not: at the final review he flagged the family names as wrong, and the source check agreed — they came from a machine recommendation inside his own planning document and were never walked name by name, while his ratified July model already carries a different top carve (the five-pillar output axis: brand identity & systems · campaigns · content · digital products & experiences · physical products & experiences) that these pages never folded in. The reconciliation is built and being walked: the recommendation page is the ONE review surface — the shelves, the naming picks, the Retail & Commerce expansion, and the Brand & Identity summary all sit there. Rulings so far (16 August, both rounds): performance ad re-homed · public-service ad retired · recruitment ad dropped — the ratified set is 64. Treat the families on this page as the superseded draft grouping, kept visible for comparison; the old families-9-and-10 naming question is absorbed into the reconciliation. Details: the review agenda, item 1. How to read this page: ratified rows are context — nothing here wants a response except what the agenda lists. The consequence of ratification: this list becomes the single governed registry; every classifier's choice list is generated from it; and the one full re-classification of the library runs against it — most of what is tagged today is tagged with the wrong kind of label, and that is re-tagged once, after this settles, not patched piecemeal.
The definition
A content type is the primary, industry-recognizable kind of piece — judged at the piece itself, independent of where it ran, why the campaign exists, what brand or product it features, and how it was produced. Internally the idea is "canonical piece type": what a producer, editor, strategist or archivist would call the piece with everything else hidden.
The test: hide the campaign name, the product, the URL, the channel, the file format, the role, and the craft credits. What is the piece?
Good answers: brand film · launch film · product demo · testimonial · customer story · tutorial · case study · announcement article · feature article · key visual · logo animation · product shot · interactive demo.
Bad answers, and where each really lives: an Instagram post (where it appeared) · a social clip (channel plus file format) · a pre-roll ad (placement) · a product campaign (the grouping) · feature content (scope) · hero (the piece's role) · video (file format) · design (the craft) · a gradient (technique) · "Codex Plugins" (the subject) · brand asset (too broad to identify anything).
Content type vs content category — the relationship, stated once
These are different questions about the same piece, and keeping them apart is what stops this list from rotting the way the old one did.
- Content type (this page) answers: what kind of piece is this? A launch film. A testimonial. A key visual.
- Content category is the field that today mixes three other questions, and the ruling splits it into its own axes: subject scope (is this about the brand, a product, a feature, a customer, a partner…) · campaign type (a Brand Campaign vs a Product Campaign vs a Feature Campaign — which is a fact about the campaign grouping the piece belongs to, recorded on the campaign, never as a label on the piece) · content role (the job: announce, explain, prove, educate — already its own multi-valued field).
So the sentence that used to fight itself now composes cleanly from separate fields: Feature Launch · Hero Launch Film · Codex Plugins — campaign type from the grouping, content type from this list, subject from the product relationship.
Why this page matters beyond browsing: this registry is what the pipeline reads. The routing matrix and every classification prompt are generated from the governed list (the taxonomy-freeze ruling), so ratifying these words is ratifying what the analyzers will be told to see.
How values display
Stored values are lowercase with underscores (launch_film); every surface a person reads renders the display name in Title Case ("Launch Film") — raw stored values never appear in the interface. This is the standing rule, and the registry carries a display name per value so it never depends on string-mangling.
The two rules that keep it clean
One primary type, several allowed. A piece can genuinely be a testimonial and a product demonstration, or a tutorial and a walkthrough. So a piece carries several types with exactly one marked primary — the same pattern moments already use — instead of awkward hybrid labels. The interface shows the primary; the others stay searchable.
The whole piece, not what's inside it. A film that is title animation top to bottom carries that as its type. A two-second title animation inside a film is a moment. The type belongs to the piece; the beats inside it belong to moments.
The proposed families
Roughly ten parent families, each holding the recognizable types. The final values get reconciled against the full registered list; these are the targets.
Brand & campaign storytelling — brand film · campaign film · manifesto / anthem film · launch film · teaser · trailer · sizzle reel · brand story / origin story
Product & feature communication — product film · feature overview · product demo · product walkthrough · explainer · product comparison · interactive demo · product configurator · app store video
Social proof (renamed from "Proof & advocacy" — Joe's pick, 10 August 2026, made with the word-overlap flag in view: "social" also names a channel, but the two live on different axes — a family name never appears where channel values do) — testimonial · customer story · case study · user story · creator story · partner story · expert endorsement · review
Education & support — tutorial · how-to · guide · lesson / course · webinar · FAQ · support article · training
Corporate communications & editorial (reordered on Joe's mark, 10 August 2026) — announcement article · news article · feature article · interview / Q&A · thought leadership · opinion · press release · newsletter · research report
Documentation & technical — technical documentation · API documentation · developer guide · release notes · white paper · specification · technical reference
Advertising & promotion — commercial / spot · promotional ad · sponsored content · offer / promotion (television, pre-roll, bumper, display and paid-social belong to channel, placement, ad format and duration — never to the type)
Amendments to family 7, all 16 August 2026, all Joe's dictated rulings:
- Performance ad LEFT the list — paid-vs-organic is a distribution fact, never a kind.
- Public-service ad RETIRED — "I don't know what a public service ad is, remove that."
- Recruitment ad DROPPED (second round) — "recruitment ad just drop"; nothing in the library carries any recruitment typing, and the employer-brand meaning lives with the employer-branding craft and the audience axes.
- Offer / promotion stays listed but leans remove — the promotion-ness is marketing intent, not a kind; it confirms at the naming review.
- Under his carve this family dissolves as a shelf; see the recommendation preview.
Social-native & community — pieces whose editorial grammar is inherently social-native (a creator collab, a meme format), not merely posted on social
Visual & identity assets — key visual · logo animation · product shot · template · brand guidelines · icon system (the specific artifact is useful; "brand asset" is not)
Event, retail & interactive experiences — event film · keynote · booth / installation piece · retail display piece · interactive experience
(Families 9 and 10 — a naming note: Joe flagged that "visual & identity assets" sits right against the brand-and-identity GROUPING and its visual-vs-verbal carve-up, and that retail/interactive spans physical and digital. That question was first parked to the Groupings chapter and has since been ABSORBED into the family reconciliation — under his carve these types now shelve as Brand & Identity, Events & Experiential, Retail & Commerce, and Interactive & Digital Experience on the recommendation page. The member types above are ratified and do not move.)
Each canonical type also states which media it applies to (image, video, text, audio, interactive, physical), so every analyzer's choice list can be generated from this one list, filtered — never three hand-synced copies again.
What happens to the values in use today
The heaviest current values, live counts probed 10 August 2026, and their fate under this proposal:
| Value in use | Pieces | Fate |
|---|---|---|
| social_post | 2,518 | Split — "social" moves to channel/platform; each piece gets its real type (announcement, ad, creator piece, customer story, key visual…) |
| advertisement_image | 1,106 | Split — type becomes promotional ad (or commercial); image is the media type; placement lives elsewhere (performance ad left the list 16 August — paid-ness is a distribution fact) |
| social_clip | 943 | Split — channel social, media video; real type assigned |
| product_demo | 751 | Keep — healthy canonical type |
| blog_post | 290 | Refine — the real type is announcement article, feature article, thought leadership, tutorial…; blog/newsroom stays as the page surface |
| feature_article | 226 | Keep |
| feature_launch | 188 | Move — that's a campaign type or content level, not a piece type |
| tutorial | 177 | Keep |
| announcement | 176 | Refine — usually announcement article |
| case_study | 149 | Keep |
| brand_film | 136 | Keep |
| white_paper | 126 | Keep (documentation family) |
| interview | 114 | Keep (editorial family) |
| press_release | 110 | Keep |
| (about 6,400 pieces) | — | Untyped today — classified once the list is ratified |
Older registered values like tvc, pre_roll_ad and bumper_ad follow the same rule: the type becomes commercial or promotional ad; broadcast, pre-roll and bumper move to channel and placement. landing_page and instagram_reel move entirely to page-surface and platform fields.
What ruling this unlocks
Ratifying this list triggers the build work already queued for the pipeline lane: the storage for several-types-one-primary, the value migration above, generated analyzer lists, and reclassifying the untyped and catch-all piles (sampled first, then run).