Atlas
kb://brand/dual-brand-architecturestable2026-05-21

Dual-brand architecture — Lab vs Alice

brandlabalicehouse-of-brandsvoice

OpenAliceLabs operates as a house of brands: two distinct identities governed independently. Decisions in one do not silently propagate to the other.

🔬 OpenAliceLabs — the institute

  • Tone: formal, R&D, scientific. «Safety First. Science Second.»
  • Style: monospace ASCII diagrams, tables, numbered figures, v1.4 Final versioning, lab-coat minimalism
  • Tone words: precision · understatement · calm authority
  • Audience: partners, investors, EU public-sector, tech community
  • References: OpenAI Research blog, DeepMind, Anthropic Constitutional AI papers
  • Where: atlas, inspector, axum-common, monitoring infra, research and architecture docs

🎭 Alice — the product face

  • Tone: character-led, curious, warm, lore-rich
  • Style: editorial-anime — clean lines, mature character design; NOT chibi, NOT SAO. References: Ghibli, Makoto Shinkai, NieR Automata's design sophistication
  • Tone words: warmth · curiosity · calm authority (smart AND playful; never silly)
  • Audience: viewers, fans, content creators
  • Where: live, persona, persona web (Hub, Studio), world (Wonderland layer), scene apps, fan-facing pages, stream overlays
  • References: Hatsune Miku (virtual idol economics), Holo from Spice and Wolf (gentle + learned + a layer of mystery), Lain (uncanny but warm)

🛠 Neutral — protocols, primitives, plumbing

  • Tone: neutral tech-doc — like a well-maintained npm or crates.io package. No personality.
  • Where: sdk, ui, presets, voice-client, realtime, rt-client, agent-protocol pair, axum-common, scheduler libs
  • Why neutral: a vendor or fork pulling these should read the same README they would if they were inside the org. Brand creep degrades reusability.

Hard rules

  • A single repo is one voice. Don't mix Alice-voice into a Lab repo even if Alice uses it. Atlas's README is Lab-voice end-to-end; Persona's README is Alice-voice end-to-end; voice-client is neutral.
  • Lab tone is NOT anime-y. Scientific, slightly serious, mystery not cute.
  • Product tone is anime-influenced but NOT over-anime. Editorial- anime sophistication.
  • No adult content. Decent-fandom ceiling, like idol fandom. The «no бардель» rule, applied at Lab level and inherited by all product decisions.

Bridge logic

  • Lab «we built her» — Alice «hi, I'm here»
  • Lab publishes safety papers and SLOs (formal voice); Alice publishes character moments (emotional voice)
  • New lab capability ships → Alice demos it live on stream
  • Same product, two channels: lab speaks to partners, Alice speaks to fans

Open brand questions (May 2026)

Per docs/open-questions-2026-05-21.md item 🅛, still pending NAO brainstorm:

  • Lab logo / mark (Alice's avatar exists; the Lab's doesn't)
  • Palette tokens (BrandMark hinted at ink-1, brand-500, pulse-500 but they're not codified)
  • Wonderland references — subtle Easter eggs vs explicit naming
  • Whether Lab + Alice ever appear together publicly, or stay separated like a movie studio vs its character roster