omd-humanize git:20260713.8a3947fA

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---
name: omd-humanize
description: >-
  Rewrite text so it reads as if a person wrote it — strip AI prose tics (Korean and
  English), translation-ese, uniform rhythm, hedging stacks, and self-negating meta-copy —
  without changing a single fact. Works on any text: page copy, blog posts, READMEs,
  marketing lines. Also used by omd-ultradesign for every word that ships.
  Triggers: humanize, 사람같이, 사람처럼 써, AI티 빼줘, 자연스럽게 바꿔, 글 다듬어,
  make it sound human, de-AI, rewrite naturally.
---

# omd-humanize

Generated prose confesses before generated pixels do. The tells are countable, and this
skill removes them **without touching what the text claims.**

## The four laws

1. **Meaning is frozen.** Facts, claims, numbers, names, quotes survive verbatim. You are
   changing rhythm and diction, never content. If a sentence cannot be de-ticced without
   changing its claim, leave it and flag it.
2. **Only rewrite what a rule tagged.** Read the text once, list the violations you found
   (pattern → span), then rewrite exactly those spans. No freestyle "improvements".
3. **Genre survives.** An essay stays an essay; a spec stays a spec. Do not make formal
   text chatty or chatty text formal.
4. **Stop before you over-edit.** Two thresholds, not one: if more than 30% of the text
   needs rewriting, warn and present only the worst offenders — do not proceed silently.
   If more than 50%, stop entirely; a text that far gone needs a human rewrite, and
   patching half of it is how the meaning drifts fastest.

## Severity hierarchy

Not all tells are equal. Treating a rare connective comma the same as a mild hedging word
makes rewrites noisy and trust collapse fast. Three tiers:

- **S1 — always remove.** One instance is the tell. C-11 connective commas, A-16
  pronoun substitutions: a single 그녀 in Korean prose reads machine-written to any fluent
  reader. Remove on first occurrence, no exceptions.
- **S2 — 1–2 instances allowed, flag at 3+.** These patterns appear in natural writing
  but cluster in generated text. A-18 nested relative clauses, A-19 stacked postpositions:
  one is fine; three in a paragraph is a fingerprint.
- **S3 — flag only when clustered.** E-7 register inconsistency: a single casual ending
  in formal prose might be intentional voice; five in a row is drift. Name the cluster
  and let the writer decide.

## The tells (Korean — from the im-not-ai taxonomy)

- **Translation-ese**: ~를 통해, ~에 대해 살펴보다, 이중 피동(-되어지다)
- **A-16** (S1): 그/그녀/그것 기계적 대명사 매핑 — 한국어는 주어를 생략하거나 명사를
  반복한다. 그/그녀가 나오면 삭제하거나 지시 대상 명사로 대체.
- **A-18** (S2): 왼쪽 분기 관형절 3중첩 이상 — "~에 의해 결정된 결과로 도출된 방향성"처럼
  명사 앞에 관형절이 3개 이상 쌓이면 분리.
- **A-19** (S2): 겹조사 — -에서의/-에로의/-으로의 같은 조사 중첩. 문장을 쪼개거나 조사를
  단순화.
- **C-11** (S1): 접속어 직후 쉼표 — 그러나, / 하지만, / 또한, / 따라서, 형태. 가장 강한
  단일 판별자. 한국어 자연문에서 접속어 뒤 쉼표는 거의 없다. 쉼표를 삭제하거나 접속어를
  제거하고 문장을 이어라.
- **Mechanical structure**: 첫째/둘째/셋째 나열, 불릿·이모지 남발
- **AI stock phrases**: 결론적으로, 시사하는 바가 크다, 주목할 만하다, ~할 필요가 있다,
  중요한 것은 ~라는 점이다
- **Uniform rhythm**: 문장 길이 분산이 없음, 같은 어미 연속(-다/-다/-다, -입니다 3연속)
- **E-7** (S3): 경어법 레벨 흔들림 — 합쇼체와 해체가 단락 안에서 섞임. 대화문 안의 흔들림은
  예외. 군집(5회+)일 때만 제거.
- **E-8** (S1): 한국어 문장 안 스페이스드 대시 — " — " 또는 " – "(양옆 공백이 있는 em-dash/
  en-dash)가 한글이 포함된 문장에 등장하면 즉시 제거. 영문 타이포그래피 관습이 번역 과정에서
  그대로 옮겨진 패턴이다. 쉼표·콜론·새 문장으로 대체. `SLOP-KO-EMDASH` 규칙과 동일한 패턴.
- **E-9** (S1): 경어법 혼용 — 해요체(아요/어요/예요/에요)와 합니다체(습니다/ㅂ니다)가 같은
  단락에서 교차하면 S1으로 처리. 따옴표 안의 대화는 예외. 페이지 전체에서 보이스 스터디가
  결정한 한 가지 어체만 사용. `SLOP-KO-REGISTER-MIX` 규칙과 동일한 패턴.
- **Redundant modification**: 매우/정말/아주 습관적 사용, 유의어 쌍(명확하고 분명한),
  -적/-성/-화 접미사 남발
- **Hedging stacks**: ~할 수 있을 것으로 보인다, ~일 수도 있다고 생각된다
- **Connector abuse**: 또한/따라서/즉/그리고 로 연속 문장 시작 — 3문장 이상 연속으로 접속어가 오거나,
  C-11 패턴(접속어 직후 쉼표)이 있을 때만 처리. 접속어 자체는 삭제하지 않는다. 자연어에서 접속어
  사용률은 문장당 0.4 수준이 정상이다. 접속어를 전부 제거하면 끊어읽기가 비인간적으로 느껴진다.
- **Tidy closure** (S2): 에세이·회고글 등 essayistic 장르에서 아직 해결되지 않은 질문을
  해결된 것처럼 포장하는 문단 마무리. "이게 가장 큰 교훈이에요", "올해의 핵심 수확이에요" 형태로
  불확실성을 지운다. 인간 필자는 "하지만 아직도 잘 모르겠다" 처럼 열린 결말을 쓴다. 단, product
  copy나 튜토리얼은 예외 — 명확한 takeaway가 정당하다. essayistic 맥락에서만 플래그.
- **Formal-noun padding**: ~것이다, ~점이다, ~수 있다 로만 끝나는 문단

## The tells (English)

- Stock openers/closers: "In conclusion", "It's worth noting", "Moreover", "delve into",
  "In today's fast-paced world"
- Rule-of-three everywhere; balanced "not only X but also Y"; em-dash chains
- Every paragraph the same length; every sentence 15–25 words
- Hedging: "can potentially", "may possibly", "it could be argued"
- Bold **key phrases** sprinkled as decoration
- **Self-introductory product copy** (S1 in hero/opener): "[Product] is a [platform/tool/
  system/solution/service] that helps you [verb]." The model is quoting its own brief.
  Rewrite from the user's change, not the product's mechanism:
  - ❌ "Acme is a project management platform that helps teams ship faster."
  - ✅ "Ship the Monday build, not the Monday Slack thread."
  The Korean form is the same pattern: "X는 Y를 도와주는 플랫폼이에요" → write what changes
  for the user, not what the product is.
- **Reflexive over-politeness** (S2, flag at 2+ instances): "Please feel free to", "We'd
  be happy to help", "Don't hesitate to reach out", "Should you have any questions." These
  phrases come from helpdesk training data. On a product page they read as a form letter.
  Cut the reflex clause; write the direct action:
  - ❌ "Please feel free to get started when you're ready."
  - ✅ "Ready when you are."
  - ❌ "We'd be happy to help you with any questions."
  - ✅ "Something unclear? [link]"
- **Over-nominalization clusters** (S2, flag at 3+ in a paragraph): "the facilitation of
  onboarding", "the optimisation of workflows", "the management of permissions". Each
  alone is acceptable; clustered they mark the register as generated. Replace with the
  verb and the concrete subject.

## Four tells the linter cannot fully catch

These require human judgment because the IR cannot measure them mechanically:

- **Hard line breaks mid-sentence** (`<br>` or `\n` inside a paragraph, not at a sentence
  boundary): the DOM collapses `<br>` before the linter sees the text, so `SLOP-BR-BREAK`
  cannot be a YAML rule. Look for `<br>` in the source HTML of any paragraph or hero line.
  Remove it; `max-width` and `line-height` control the column, not the markup. An inserted
  break that is not at a sentence end is always an AI formatting artifact.

- **Self-explainer copy** (both languages): the product describing its own mechanism in
  README cadence instead of selling an outcome. Patterns: "X는 Y를 잡아내는 플러그인이에요",
  "X is a tool that helps you Y", "omd detects Z and fixes it". These read as the model
  quoting its own task description. Rewrite as the outcome: what the reader gets, what
  changes, what happens next. The self-introductory product copy tell above is its hero
  variant — same root, slightly different surface; both are pre-handoff checks, not linter
  rules, because product comparison tables and developer docs legitimately use the same
  construction.

## The pink elephant (absolute, both languages)

Copy must never state what the thing is NOT. Told "no clutter", a model writes "No
clutter here." — that is the model quoting its own instructions. Delete the negation and
write the positive fact it was hiding:

- ❌ "이 사이트에는 광고나 불필요한 내용이 없습니다" → ✅ 실제로 있는 것을 말한다
- ❌ "No fluff, no jargon, just value" → ✅ name the value concretely
- ❌ "We don't waste your time" → ✅ "Setup takes four minutes."

And **design rationale never appears in shipped copy.** If the text is page copy inside an
omd project, run `omd check <page>` — SLOP-LEAKED-RATIONALE fires when five consecutive
words match `.omd/frame.md` or `decisions.md`. The frame explains the work; the page must
never quote it.

## What to write toward

The tells above describe what to remove. `theory/voice.md` under the directory `omd pack dir` prints (in this repo:
`core/theory/voice.md`) describes what to write toward: sentence-length variance as the human signal, front-loading,
concrete nouns over nominalisations, the Mailchimp plainspoken standard, the Toss "Easy
to speak" test for Korean. The removes and the positive moves are two sides of the same
operation — a rewrite that only strips tells without installing variance is a cleaned-up
monotone, not a human voice.

## Procedure

1. Read the whole text. Build the violation list: `[pattern-id] "span"` — one line each.
2. Rewrite tagged spans only. Vary sentence length deliberately: after two long sentences,
   a four-word one. Restore the writer's register, not yours.
3. Show the result, then the violation list so the change is auditable.
4. For page copy in an omd project: `omd check <page> --category slop` must come back
   clean before you call it done.