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---
name: anti-slop-writing
description: Make writing sound like a person wrote it. Rewrites drafts that read as machine-generated, restores voice that AI editing flattened, and audits text for AI tells when asked. Use when a draft feels generic or corporate, when polishing anything an LLM helped write, before publishing a post or doc, or when someone asks whether writing "sounds like AI".
---
# Anti-Slop Writing
Make the writing better and make it sound like a person. Removing tells is the means, not the end.
Distilled from 45 published anti-slop and humanizing skills. Harvest method and hard counts in
`references/corpus-evidence.md`.
## Read this first, or the rest will mislead you
**Word lists are the weakest signal and they are going stale.** `delve`, `tapestry`, `vibrant`,
and `myriad` are largely absent from current frontier-model output. A draft that avoids them is
not human. It is just newer.
Four consequences that govern everything below:
1. **Structure outlives vocabulary.** Sentence-shape and paragraph-shape tells survive model
updates. Word tells do not. Weight structure higher.
2. **Tells are diagnostic in clusters, not alone.** One em dash means nothing. Em dashes plus a
rule-of-three plus an "In conclusion" section plus uniform paragraph lengths is a confession.
Never flag a single occurrence as evidence.
3. **The failure mode is over-correction (The Twin Ditches).**
- *Ditch A (Academic Whitepaper Slop):* Stripping personality pushes the draft into a detached,
passive, 3rd-person clinical whitepaper or royal "we" that reads like a committee report.
- *Ditch B (Performed Incompetence):* Confusing human voice with self-deprecation, confusion,
or beginner apologies. If the author is a senior engineer who builds production systems,
do NOT strip their authority or force faux-modesty.
4. **These heuristics are biased against non-native English speakers.** Simpler vocabulary,
more formal connectives, and more even sentence rhythm are all normal in competent
second-language writing, and all trip the checks below. Never tell someone their writing
"sounds like AI" on rhythm and connective evidence alone. Name specific patterns and let
them judge.
## Three modes
**IMPROVE (default).** The draft needs to be better and sound like a person. Rewrite it. Return
the edited draft plus a `What changed` section. This is what to do unless told otherwise.
**AUDIT.** Someone wants to know if a piece reads as machine-written, without a rewrite. Name
each pattern, quote the line, give the fix in a few words. Do not rewrite. Do not output a
probability that the text was AI-generated: you cannot know that, detectors guess, and they are
most wrong against the writers named in point 4. Named patterns are checkable. A score is not.
**RESTORE.** A specific and common case: the draft was *already* edited by an AI and came back
flattened. The tells are gone but so is the person. Skip Steps 3 and 4, go straight to Step 6,
and work from whatever earlier draft or sample of the author's writing you can get.
## Dose
Decide before editing. State which you chose in the output.
| Dose | When | What you touch |
|---|---|---|
| **Light** | strong draft, a few tells | named patterns only, nothing else |
| **Medium** | default | patterns, rhythm, and specificity |
| **Heavy** | reads as fully generated, author agrees | structure and argument order too |
**Heavy is opt-in.** Never restructure someone's argument because it would be tidier. If the
draft needs a heavy pass and you were not asked for one, do a medium pass and say what a heavy
one would change.
If the draft is already good, **say so and stop.** "Two minor things, otherwise this reads fine"
is a complete and correct output. Manufacturing findings to look useful is its own failure.
## Genre calibration
The rules below are not uniform across formats. Set this in Step 0.
| Format | Em dashes | Contractions | Fragments | Structure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social post | zero | yes | yes | loose |
| Blog, essay | ≤1 per 500w | yes | sparingly | headings ok |
| Technical docs | ≤1 per 500w | yes | no | headings required |
| Commit message | zero | no | no | imperative subject, prose body |
| Legal, medical, formal | as house style | no | no | house style wins |
Where a house style guide exists, it beats this skill.
## Procedure
### 0. Establish the baseline
Read the whole draft. Note internally, do not output:
- The core point in one sentence. If you cannot find it, ask rather than guessing.
- 3 to 5 **voice signals to protect**: vocabulary, cadence, bluntness, humour, digressions,
admissions, profanity, level of polish.
- Author authority: Is the author an experienced practitioner? Protect their authority.
- Format, audience, and genre row from the table above.
- Dose.
Anything you cannot attribute to a rule below stays exactly as written. That is the default,
not a fallback.
### 1. Run the mechanical scan
Countable. Run before making judgment calls. Thresholds and reasoning in
`references/detection-rubric.md`.
| Check | Flag when |
|---|---|
| Em dashes | above the genre budget, or any cluster |
| Sentence-length spread | standard deviation under ~4 words over a 100-sentence window |
| Consecutive same-length runs | 3+ sentences within 5 words of each other |
| Sentence-opener repetition | over half a paragraph's sentences start with The / This / It / In |
| Formal transitions | more than ~8 per 1,000 words |
| Hedging density | over ~5% of words |
| Passive constructions | over ~30% of sentences |
| Rule-of-three lists | any list of exactly three near-synonyms |
| Paragraph-length uniformity | most paragraphs within one sentence of each other |
| Unsourced authority | "experts agree" / "studies show" with no name |
| Specificity floor | any paragraph with no number, name, date, or measurable quantity |
**Scan mechanically, never fix mechanically.** Fix per occurrence.
### 2. Run the pattern scan
`references/structural-patterns.md`. The shapes that survive model updates:
- **Negative contrast.** "It's not X, it's Y". The most model-characteristic sentence shape. State Y.
- **Participial pseudo-analysis.** Trailing `-ing` clauses that pretend to interpret: "highlighting the importance of", "underscoring the shift".
- **Significance inflation.** "stands as a testament", "marks a pivotal moment". State the fact.
- **Copula avoidance.** "serves as", "represents" where "is" is clearer.
- **Throat-clearing and faux-insight openers.** "Here's the thing", "What most people get wrong".
- **Downplaying others.** "Most developers do X, but I do Y", "unlike casual prompt toys". Cut the sneer. True authority is quiet; focus on domain constraints.
- **Failure-framing in headings.** "Why X breaks down / fails". Reframe around domain constraints.
- **Jargon theater.** Reject aerospace/finance cosplay ("cockpit", "tranches", "accretion drift"). Use plain technical English ("dashboard", "clearing timeline Phase 1/Phase 2").
- **Summary-recap endings.** "In conclusion", or a final paragraph restating the piece.
- **Fake-profound kickers.** The closing aphorism. Delete it, do not improve it.
### 3. Run the vocabulary scan
`references/banned-vocabulary.md`. Tier 1 replaces on sight. Tier 2 flags only when 2+ appear in
one paragraph. Tier 4 flags Jargon Theater on sight.
**When you remove a flagged word, rewrite the sentence.** Swapping in a synonym leaves the
machine sentence intact with different paint.
### 4. Run the formatting scan
`references/formatting-tells.md`. Emoji headings, bold mid-sentence, the numbered-bold-colon
list shape, bullets where prose reads better, smart quotes pasted from a chat window, leftover
placeholders and citation markup.
### 5. Apply the portability test
Swap the company, person, product, and country. If the sentence survives unchanged, it is
filler. Replace it with a fact, mechanism, number, consequence, or judgment specific to this
subject, or cut it.
### 6. Put the person back
**Read `references/preserving-voice.md` before doing this step.**
Ensure you avoid the Twin Ditches:
- Do NOT retreat into academic whitepaper slop (passive voice, royal "we").
- Do NOT force performed incompetence on a senior engineer. Protect Quiet Technical Authority.
- **Restore the specific.** Real numbers, real code, real laws.
- **Vary rhythm on meaning.** 2–4 sentence narrative paragraphs.
- **Keep contractions.**
- **Keep first-person ownership.** ("I built", "I architected").
- **Take the position.** State choices clearly.
### 7. Self-check before output
Re-run the mechanical scan on your own output. Then read it aloud.
Final question: **would the author recognise this as their own writing?**
## Hard rules
- Never change what is claimed. Only how it is said.
- Never invent a fact, statistic, source, quote, or opinion to replace a vague one. Flag it.
- Never downplay other developers or treat peers as inferior ("most developers use toys").
- Never frame headings around others "failing" or "breaking down"; frame around domain constraints.
- Never strip senior technical authority or replace confident first-person singular ("I built") with detached academic third-person ("the system was evaluated") or the royal "we".
- Never replace an em dash with a hyphen. Use a period, comma, or parentheses.
- Never restructure an argument on a light or medium dose.
- Cutting must be proportional to the actual slop.
## Output format
**Improve mode**
```
[full edited draft]
## What changed
Dose: [light / medium / heavy]
- [pattern removed], N instances
- [structural change], and why
## Left alone deliberately
- [voice trait], and why it stays
## Needs you
- [any claim I cut or flagged that needs a real number or source]
```
**Audit mode**
```
## Patterns found
1. [Pattern name] · "quoted line" → fix in a few words
## Mechanical scan
[checks that failed, with counts]
## Not flagged
[voice traits that look deliberate and should be protected]
```
## Done =
The writing is better, the author would still recognise it as theirs, every rule-triggered
pattern is either fixed or consciously kept with a stated reason, and anything that needed a
real fact is flagged rather than invented.