# AI Anti Patterns

> ALWAYS load before finalizing ANY written prose, and whenever text is suspected of being machine-written - "does this sound like AI", "make this sound human", "clean up the AI-isms", "did a bot write this", "check this draft before I send it", "review this for AI tells", "this reads like ChatGPT", "is this student paper AI-generated", or before handing back any draft, memo, email, or article you wrote. Use proactively even if the user never mentions AI writing.

- Skill: `edwinhu/ai-anti-patterns` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 25 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add edwinhu/ai-anti-patterns`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/edwinhu/ai-anti-patterns/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Productivity
- Author: edwinhu (https://skillmd.com/u/edwinhu)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/edwinhu/ai-anti-patterns

---


# AI Writing Anti-Patterns

Field guide for detecting and revising AI-generated content indicators based on Wikipedia's "Signs of AI writing" guide.

## When to Use

Invoke this skill:
- Before finalizing ANY AI-assisted writing
- When reviewing text for AI writing indicators
- When editing content to sound more natural
- After completing writing tasks (automatic via hooks)

## The Iron Law

**Check every piece of AI-assisted writing against these patterns before submission.**

This is not optional. AI writing patterns are detectable and undermine credibility.

## Quick Screening Order

Start with the most objective indicators:

| Priority | Section | What to Check |
|----------|---------|---------------|
| 1 | ChatGPT Artifacts | `turn0search0`, `oaicite`, `contentReference` |
| 2 | Citation Problems | Hallucinated DOIs, dead links, non-existent sources |
| 3 | Prompt Refusals | "As an AI language model...", "I hope this helps" |
| 4 | Puffery | "stands as", "plays a vital role", "rich tapestry" |
| 5 | Structure | Section summaries, "Despite challenges", rule of three |

## Critical Patterns to Avoid

### CRITICAL Severity (Immediate Revision Required)

These patterns are unambiguous AI artifacts:

**ChatGPT-Specific Artifacts:**
- `turn0search0`, `turn1search2` (internal search references)
- `oaicite:X` (citation placeholders)
- `contentReference[oaicite:X]` (unresolved references)
- JSON attribution blocks in output

**Prompt Refusals:**
- "As an AI language model..."
- "I cannot provide..."
- "I hope this helps!"
- "I hope this email finds you well"

### HIGH Severity (Strong Revision Recommended)

**Puffery and Exaggeration:**
- "stands as" (a testament/example/beacon)
- "plays a vital/crucial/pivotal role"
- "rich tapestry of"
- "nestled in/among"
- "it's important to note that"
- "delves into"
- "the landscape of"

**Promotional Language:**
- "groundbreaking", "transformative", "revolutionary"
- "unparalleled", "unprecedented"
- "cutting-edge", "state-of-the-art"

### MEDIUM Severity (Review and Consider)

**Structural Patterns:**
- Section summaries that repeat the heading
- "Despite [challenge], [positive outcome]" formula
- Negative parallelisms: "However... Nevertheless..."
- Rule of three: exactly three examples every time
- Weasel wording: "some experts say", "it is believed"

**Stylistic Quirks:**
- False precision — a summarising figure carried to spurious decimal places
  ("a rate of 1.3771 percent", "covering 85.63 percent of the universe").
  Prefer a high-level fraction in the abstract and introduction, where a figure
  summarises rather than reports; keep the exact value next to the exhibit that
  backs it. Enforced as `style·false_precision`.
- Elegant variation (synonym cycling to avoid repetition)
- False ranges ("from X to Y" without real data)
- Title Case In All Headings
- Em dash overuse (—)
- Excessive boldface for emphasis

### User-Voice Preferences (NOT AI tells — corpus-checked 2026-08-05)

**This section is a personal style preference, not a linter, and the name it used to carry
("User-Voice Lint") was doing real damage.** Nothing here was ever in an executable table, so a
`writing-verify` pass ran every scorer and knew none of these phrases — while the heading implied
four enforced rules. Three of the four have now been measured against 14,294,148 sentences of human
scholarship (8.73M finance/accounting + 5.56M law review) and they are **normal human prose**:

| phrase | finance | law | verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| `has bite` / `have more bite` | 1.9/M | 5.2/M | **human** — incl. a law review title, *"Do the SEC's New Rating Agency Rules Have Any Bite?"* |
| `the cut` (regulatory reduction) | 8.7/M | 4.7/M | **human** — *"the cut in the corporate tax rate"* |
| `Of course,` | 299.9/M | 523.7/M | **human** |
| `To be sure,` ← *this section used to recommend it* | 11.5/M | **194.0/M** | **human**, and 3× commoner in law reviews than what it replaces |
| `Admittedly,` | 15.5/M | 63.3/M | **human** |
| `cuts against` | 0.9/M | 13.1/M | **human** |

Keep these as voice preferences if you like them — they are unfalsifiable and that is fine. Do not
present them as AI detection. Full record: `docs/investigations/2026-08-05_emphasis-enforcement.md`.

**What DID survive the gate**, and is now enforced as a span:

- `ai-tic·sev3·rule-bites` — *"the reform should bite hardest"*. The **verb** is unattested
  (1/14.29M, and that hit is a cited *Financial Times* headline in a footnote). The **noun** above
  is not. That noun/verb split is the whole rule.
- `ai-tic·sev2·sharpest-version` — *"the sharpest version of the objection"*. 0/14.29M, while all
  four hits of `<superlative> version of` are *"the **strongest** version of"* and `the sharpest
  <noun>` at large is 86 hits. The word is ordinary; the collocation is the tell.

**Bridge repetitions** remain the one genuinely enforced entry from the old list —
`skills/writing-verify/scripts/bridge_repetition_check.py`, invoked from
`workflows/writing-verify.js`. It is real logic over section openings, not a phrase table.

**To check a phrase yourself:** `/ai-tic <phrase>` — it runs the FP-hunt against both corpus halves
and refuses to add anything over the eligibility gate.

## How to Revise

### For Puffery

| AI Pattern | Human Alternative |
|------------|-------------------|
| "stands as a testament to" | "shows" or "demonstrates" |
| "plays a vital role in" | "affects" or just state the effect |
| "rich tapestry of" | describe specifically what it contains |
| "nestled in the heart of" | "in" or "located in" |
| "delves into" | "examines" or "covers" |

### For Structure

| AI Pattern | Human Alternative |
|------------|-------------------|
| Section summary of heading | Start with substance, not meta-commentary |
| "Despite challenges..." | State the reality directly without formula |
| Exactly three examples | Use the number that fits: 2, 4, 5, or just 1 |
| "It's important to note" | Just state the important thing |

### For False Precision

A figure in the abstract or introduction is SUMMARISING; a figure beside its table is REPORTING.
Only the second earns its decimal places. Carrying four of them into a summary implies a precision
the estimate does not have and reads as machine output.

| AI Pattern | Human Alternative |
|------------|-------------------|
| "a rate of 1.3771 percent" | "about one and a half percent" |
| "roughly ten times the 2.7361 percent rate" | "roughly ten times the abstention-wide rate" |
| "6,612 of 575,553 testable items — 1.15 percent — fall below" | "about one percent of testable items fall below" |
| "covering 85.63 percent of the testable universe" | "covering roughly six in seven of the testable universe" |
| "the 28.3328 percent figure" | "that figure" |

Exceptions the rule already carries, and which must stay exceptions: exact values inside a table,
figure caption, code block or footnote; years, statutory and rule cites, docket, page and version
numbers; and money where the cents are the point.

### For Promotional Language

| AI Pattern | Human Alternative |
|------------|-------------------|
| "groundbreaking" | describe what it actually does |
| "revolutionary" | compare to what came before |
| "cutting-edge" | specify the technology |
| "transformative" | show the transformation with evidence |

## Reference Files

For detailed patterns and extensive examples, consult:

**THE "ENFORCED BY" COLUMN IS THE POINT OF THIS TABLE.** Eleven chapters listed as reference
material reads as eleven chapters of coverage; it is not. Four of them have no executable module
and are marked reference-only here so nobody has to rediscover the gap by shipping a draft through
a clean review pass. (That is exactly how chapter 05's boldface entry went unenforced until
v5.134.0 — see `docs/investigations/2026-08-05_emphasis-enforcement.md`.)

| File | Contents | Enforced by |
|------|----------|-------------|
| `references/_index.md` | Overview and quick screening guide | — |
| `references/01-puffery-and-exaggeration.md` | "Stands as", superficial analyses | `wikipedia-puffery` |
| `references/02-promotional-language.md` | "Rich tapestry", disclaimers | `wikipedia-promotional` |
| `references/03-structural-patterns.md` | Section summaries, negative parallelisms | `wikipedia-structural` |
| `references/04-stylistic-quirks.md` | Elegant variation, false ranges | **reference only** — regexable, but must clear the ai-tic corpus gate first |
| `references/05-formatting-and-typography.md` | Boldface, em dashes, emojis | `emphasis`, `formatting`, `em-dash` (boldface/emoji since v5.134.0); inline-header lists partly |
| `references/06-communication-patterns.md` | Subject lines, "I hope this helps" | `wikipedia-communication` |
| `references/07-template-artifacts.md` | Mad Libs patterns, placeholders | `wikipedia-template-artifacts` |
| `references/08-markup-issues.md` | Markdown vs wikitext confusion | **reference only** — wikitext-specific; no in-repo analogue |
| `references/09-chatgpt-specific-artifacts.md` | turn0search, oaicite | `wikipedia-chatgpt-artifacts` |
| `references/10-citation-problems.md` | Hallucinated DOIs, dead links | **reference only** — covered better by `skills/cite-check` + `skills/source-verify` and the `cite-fidelity-*` constraints, which check citations against sources rather than pattern-matching them |
| `references/11-meta-indicators.md` | Abrupt cutoffs, style discrepancies | **reference only** — judgement; lives in the `user-agents/writing-reviewer.md` rubric |

Every named system is a `scripts/prose-audit.py` system, so a finding from it carries a span id.
A chapter marked **reference only** produces no span, which by THE READER'S RULE means anything it
surfaces is judgement, not a deterministic finding.

## Automatic Detection

This plugin includes PostToolUse hooks that automatically scan Write/Edit output for anti-patterns. When patterns are detected:

1. Hook emits a warning with specific patterns found
2. Claude immediately revises the content
3. Revision removes or replaces flagged patterns

The hook checks for all CRITICAL and HIGH severity patterns automatically.

## Review Facts

- A user's style request ("make it punchy", "professional tone") is a request for an outcome, not for AI-smell — delivering it with puffery, hedges, or bold-emphasis patterns intact ships text that reads as obviously AI-generated and damages the user's credibility.
- Skimming is not checking. The check is sentence-by-sentence against the pattern list; a skim that lets puffery pass because flagging it felt pedantic presents unreviewed text as reviewed — an unverified claim.

## Key Principles

From Wikipedia's guide:

1. **These are signs, not proof** - Multiple indicators strengthen the case
2. **Context matters** - Some patterns appear in human writing too
3. **Focus on deeper issues** - Surface defects point to synthesis and quality problems
4. **Don't rely on detection tools** - Human judgment required

## Related Skills

- `/writing` - Core writing principles from Elements of Style
- `/writing-legal` - Legal writing (Phase 2)
- `/writing-econ` - Economics writing (Phase 2)