Claude writes fast. But if you publish five articles over a few weeks without any guidance, they can each feel slightly different — one is formal, the next is casual, images look unrelated to each other. The articles are good individually but don't feel like they belong to the same site.

The good news: fixing this is simple. You don't need a brand guide document or a complicated setup. Two habits solve it entirely.

Writing style: use a previous article as your reference

The most effective way to keep Claude's writing consistent is to point it at an article you've already published and liked. At the start of your conversation, say something like:

"Before writing the new article, read this one first and match the tone and style: get_article slug=how-to-publish-articles-with-claude"

Claude will call the get_article tool, read the full body of your existing article, and use it as a style reference for the new one. It picks up things automatically — sentence length, whether you use contractions, how technical the vocabulary is, whether you write in first person, how you structure sections.

You can also paste a URL to any article on your site and Claude will fetch and read it the same way. The key is giving Claude something concrete to match rather than a vague instruction like "write in a professional tone."

If you write articles regularly, you can take this further by creating a Claude Project for your site. Add your style instructions once in the project context — a short description of your tone, what to avoid, typical article length. Every conversation in that project starts with that context automatically, so you never have to repeat it.

Article image consistency: use a reference image

The same principle applies to article images. When you generate your first article image and you're happy with the style — the colors, illustration style, mood — save that image URL. It's stored in your PublishMCP account and the URL stays permanent.

When generating an article image for any future article, give Claude the URL of your reference image:

"Generate an article image in the same style as this one: https://www.publishmcp.net/images_published/1/your-first-image.png"

Claude passes it to the generate_image tool as a reference_image_url. The image model receives the reference and generates a new image that matches the visual style — same illustration approach, same color palette, same general mood — while being unique to the new article's topic.

You can also upload any image to Claude directly in the chat and say "generate an article image in this style." Claude will use it the same way. This works well if you have an existing brand image, a logo, or a design from another tool you want to match.

Why this works better than a style guide document

Writing style guides are useful but abstract. Telling Claude "be conversational but technical" is less effective than showing it a specific article that is conversational but technical. Concrete examples beat written rules every time when working with AI.

The same is true for images. Describing "flat design, cartoon style, blue and orange" in a prompt produces different results each time. A reference image produces much more consistent results because the model is directly matching visual features rather than interpreting words.

Keep one good article and one good image saved as your references. Point Claude to them at the start of each new publishing session. That's the whole system.