The voices catalog

A style in LingoVae is a voice — a set of instructions, do-and-don’t rules, and example outputs that tells the AI how to write your product descriptions.

This page covers everything about styles: browsing the catalog, installing styles into your library, editing them, creating your own, and the special rules that apply when a style is in use.

The catalog vs your library

LingoVae has two places styles live:

• The catalog is a global, curated set of pre-built styles we maintain. Everyone using LingoVae sees the same catalog. Browse it at Styles → Browse catalog.
• Your library is the per-store set of styles you’ve installed. You can only style products with styles that are in your library. View it at Styles.

When you find a style you like in the catalog, you click the star icon to save it to your library. At that moment, LingoVae takes a frozen copy of the catalog style and adds it to your library. From then on, your copy is yours — edits you make won’t change anyone else’s copy, and updates we make to the catalog won’t change yours.

The starter styles

Every new store gets four styles pre-installed in their library:

These four are available on every plan, including Free. You can edit or remove them just like any other installed style.

Browsing the catalog

Open Styles → Browse catalog. You’ll see every style currently available, grouped by category (Tone, Use case, Industry, Seasonal).

For each style you can:

• Preview it on a sample product, to see what it actually produces
• Compare it side-by-side with another style (see below)
• Install it into your library (click the star)

Some styles in the catalog are marked Premium with a lock. These require Grow or above to install. On Free and Starter, you can still preview them — you just can’t install them yet.

Compare two styles side-by-side

On any catalog page, hover over a style and click Compare. Pick a second style, then pick a product to compare them on. LingoVae generates one draft from each style on the same product, side by side, with the original column on the left.

This is the fastest way to choose between two voices. It costs two transformations from your monthly quota — one per style generated.

Installing a style into your library

Click the star next to any catalog style. One of three things happens:

1. You have room. The style installs. You can use it immediately.
2. Your library is full. A dialog appears showing your currently installed styles and asks which one to replace. Pick one; LingoVae archives it (any products already styled with it stay published) and installs the new style in its place.
3. The style requires a higher plan. You see an upgrade prompt. The style does not install.

The library cap is 10 styles on every plan. If you’re grandfathered in with more than 10 styles, you keep them — you just can’t add a new one without replacing one.

Editing a style

Open any style from your library to edit it. Most fields are mergeant-editable on every plan:

• Style name and description — purely cosmetic; affects what you see in dropdowns.
• Length — minimum and maximum word count for the generated body copy.
• Must mention — terms or phrases the AI must include if relevant (brand names, certifications, key features).
• Must avoid — terms or phrases the AI must not use (competitor names, claims you can’t legally make, banned words).
• Tone modifiers — formality slider, humour slider, urgency slider.
• Training examples — paste 1–5 of your favourite product descriptions written in this voice. The AI uses them as exemplars.

The core instructions of a style (the actual prompt that defines the voice) are only editable on Pro and above. On Free, Starter, and Grow you’re editing the tunable knobs around the voice; on Pro you can rewrite the voice itself.

Plain text only. Style metadata is plain text. If you want to put rich formatting into your descriptions — bold, italics, lists, headings — that happens at the draft level (when you review and edit the generated output), not at the style level. See the rich-text editor on the review page.

The style lock

If a bulk job is currently using a style — running, queued, or paused — that style is locked. You cannot edit it until the job finishes. This is intentional: it keeps every product in the batch styled consistently. Half the job using one set of rules and half using another would produce a catalogue split.

When a style is locked, the edit form is disabled and a banner explains why. You have three ways out:

1. Wait for the job to finish. The lock releases automatically.
2. Cancel the job. The lock releases immediately; everything generated so far stays in your review queue.
3. Duplicate the style and edit the copy. The original stays locked; your duplicate is editable and independent.

Creating a custom style

Custom styles are a Pro feature.

Open Styles → Create custom style to launch the wizard. It walks you through four steps:

1. Voice. Describe how the AI should sound. (“Warm, plainspoken, like a knowledgeable friend at a hardware store. Never use jargon without explaining it. Never sound corporate.”)
2. Words you love. Terms, phrases, or stylistic hallmarks the AI should reach for. (“hand-feel,” “built to last,” “made in Vermont”)
3. Words to avoid. Terms the AI should not use. (Competitor names, prohibited claims, internal codenames, anything trademarked you don’t own.)
4. Settings. Length range, formality, training examples (paste 1–5 of your existing descriptions written in this voice).

When you submit the wizard, LingoVae synthesises a fully-formed style from your inputs. This step uses a special-purpose AI call that does not count toward your monthly transformation quota.

After synthesis, you’ll see the generated style with a sample preview. Iterate as needed — the wizard saves a draft you can return to.

Sharing and exporting styles

On every plan, you can export a style as JSON from its detail page. The JSON contains every field except the training examples (which may include your private product copy).

On Pro and above, you can import a JSON style file. Useful if you have multiple Shopify stores and want consistent voices across them, or if a contractor delivers a style file to you.

Archived styles

When you replace a style in your library, it doesn’t get deleted — it moves to archived. Archived styles:

• Are still in effect for any product already styled with them. The storefront keeps rendering those styled descriptions.
• Can be restored to your library at any time (subject to the library cap; you may need to archive a different one to make room).
• Are listed under Settings → Archived styles.

This is part of the hibernate-don’t-destroy contract: removing a style from active use never removes it from the store.

Style versioning

When you edit a style, LingoVae keeps a version history of the changes. You don’t see this directly in the UI, but it matters in two places:

• Frozen at job time. When you start a bulk job, the job captures the style as-is at that moment. Even if the style later changes, every product in that job got the version that was current when the job started. This is why the style lock exists.
• Per-product audit trail. Every styled product remembers which version of which style produced it. On Pro, you can see this in version history.