cleanexpo anti-ai-slop
A quality gate for prose. It catches the mechanical tells of AI-generated text and forces writing back toward a specific human voice: concrete, load-bearing, and unafraid to make a plain claim.
Applies to all writing tasks by default. Do not wait to be asked — if you are producing prose a human will read, run the gate.
Two modes
Quick Scan (default for short text, review requests, "does this read as AI?")
- Read the draft, flag every hit against the banned-phrases table and structural rules below.
- Return a slop score (0–100, lower is cleaner) and a bulleted list of specific hits with line references.
- Do NOT rewrite. The author decides.
Deep Rewrite (for "fix this", "make it human", "de-slop", or new drafts)
- Run the voice-first workflow below, producing a clean draft.
- Show the slop score before and after.
- Preserve the author's meaning and facts exactly — cut ornament, never substance.
Pick Deep Rewrite when the task is to produce or repair text; Quick Scan when the task is to assess it.
Banned phrases and patterns
| Category | Banned | Use instead |
|---|---|---|
| Filler openers | "In today's fast-paced world", "In the ever-evolving landscape of", "When it comes to", "It's important to note that", "It's worth noting that" | Delete. Start at the first real claim. |
| Empty transitions | "Moreover", "Furthermore", "Additionally", "That said", "With that in mind", "At the end of the day" | A period. Or nothing. |
| Hedge stacking | "may potentially", "could possibly", "generally tends to", "in many cases can" | State it, or state the condition once. |
| Self-praise adjectives | "seamless", "robust", "cutting-edge", "world-class", "game-changing", "powerful", "comprehensive", "innovative", "elevate", "unlock", "leverage", "delve", "navigate the complexities" | Say what it does. Show, don't assert. |
| Antithesis cliché | "It's not just X, it's Y", "It's not about X — it's about Y" | Make one claim. Drop the fake pivot. |
| Rule-of-three padding | reflexive triads: "fast, reliable, and scalable" | Keep the one that carries weight. |
| Closing boilerplate | "In conclusion", "Ultimately", "At its core", "The bottom line is" | End on the last real sentence. |
| Corporate verbs | "utilize", "facilitate", "streamline", "spearhead" | use, help, simplify, lead |
| Vague intensifiers | "very", "really", "truly", "incredibly", "actually" | Cut. If it matters, quantify it. |
Structural pattern rules
- No listicle reflex. Prose is not always three bullets. Use a paragraph when the ideas connect; use a list only when items are genuinely parallel and unordered.
- Em-dash budget. At most one em-dash per paragraph. AI over-uses them as an all-purpose joint. Prefer a full stop or a comma.
- Vary sentence length. If three consecutive sentences are within ~5 words of each other, break the rhythm. Slop is metronomic.
- One idea per sentence, one claim per paragraph. Padding hides behind subordinate clauses.
- Concrete over abstract. Replace "solutions", "capabilities", "offerings" with the actual thing.
- No hedged conclusions. If the draft argues a point, land it. "It depends" is only allowed when you then say on what.
- Cut the meta. Delete sentences that describe the text itself ("This section will explore…", "Let's dive into…").
- Active voice by default. Passive only when the actor is genuinely unknown or irrelevant.
Quality gate thresholds
Compute a slop score: start at 0, add per hit —
- Banned phrase: +4
- Structural rule violation: +6
- Antithesis cliché or closing boilerplate: +8
Thresholds:
- 0–10 — Ship. Clean.
- 11–25 — Revise. Fix the flagged hits; usually surface-level.
- 26+ — Rewrite. Escalate Quick Scan to Deep Rewrite; the draft is structurally slop.
Never pass text scoring 26+ off as final in Deep Rewrite mode.
Voice-first drafting workflow (Deep Rewrite)
- Say it out loud first. Draft the point as you would say it to one specific person across a table. That sentence is the spine.
- Lead with the claim. Put the load-bearing sentence first. Cut every word before it.
- Support with the concrete. One real example, number, or mechanism beats three adjectives.
- Read for rhythm. Vary sentence length. Read it aloud; if you stumble or drone, cut.
- Run the gate. Score against the table and structural rules. Fix every hit above threshold.
- Delete 10%. After it reads clean, cut another tenth. The strongest version is shorter than you think.
What this skill will not do
- It will not flatten a deliberate, distinctive voice into grey neutrality. The target is human and specific, not sanded-down.
- It will not change facts, claims, or the author's argument. It cuts ornament, not substance.
- It will not ban a word the context genuinely earns — the tables are defaults, not absolutes. Flag, judge, then decide.