Technical-to-Buyer Translator

Describe what a product technically does, list the buyers who need to understand it, and it holds one core technical fact constant while translating it into value-prop copy for each — so a CFO and an engineer are hearing the same underlying truth, in language each of them actually cares about.

Live: https://buyer-translator.vercel.app/ (update once deployed)

What it does

1. Hold — extracts one core technical fact from the description that has to stay true, unchanged, across every version.
2. Translate — writes a distinct headline + value-prop copy per buyer, framed around what that specific buyer needs to hear, not a generic rephrasing of the same paragraph.
3. Check — flags the real risk in each translation: where it could be misread, overclaimed, or object to by a reader from a different audience.

This is the third tool in a set that maps to how I actually run brand work — diagnose (the Brand Intelligence Toolkit), architect (the Category Thesis Generator), and execute (this one): taking a fixed technical truth and making it legible to different audiences without losing what's actually true — the same move behind the Ekso Bionics dual-market brand architecture case study at ashleypola.com.

Stack

• Next.js 14 (App Router)
• Anthropic API (claude-sonnet-5), called server-side from a route handler — the API key never reaches the browser
• No database — stateless, one request in, one JSON response out

Running locally

npm install
cp .env.example .env.local
# edit .env.local and add your real ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
npm run dev

Visit http://localhost:3000.

Deploying to Vercel

1. Push this repo to GitHub.
2. In Vercel, Add New → Project, import the repo.
3. Under Environment Variables, add:
   • ANTHROPIC_API_KEY — your key from console.anthropic.com
4. Deploy. No other config needed — Vercel auto-detects Next.js.

If you rotate or add the key after the first deploy, redeploy for it to take effect.

Notes

• The API key is a server-side env var (not NEXT_PUBLIC_) on purpose — only read inside app/api/generate/route.js, never shipped to the client.
• The model is prompted to never invent capabilities the product description didn't state, and to always name a real risk per translation rather than defaulting to "none" — output is a drafting aid, not finished copy.

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Built by Ashley Pola — brand and narrative strategist.