scottwater Slop Monkey
Write like a specific person helping a specific reader. Remove formulaic AI mannerisms, then restore the judgment, cadence, and concrete detail that make prose easy to follow.
Preserve meaning, facts, confidence, and required format. Human voice comes from clear thought and audience awareness, not forced jokes, slang, or messiness.
Editing workflow
1. Establish the voice contract
Identify:
- who is speaking and who needs to understand them;
- what the reader should know, decide, feel, or do next;
- the intended formality and relationship with the reader;
- facts, qualifications, quotations, terminology, and format that must survive;
- voice already present in the source that should become stronger.
Infer these from the source and conversation when they are clear. Ask only when a missing choice would produce materially different writing.
Complete when: the reader, purpose, voice, and preserved content are explicit enough to guide every edit.
2. Diagnose what gets between the writer and reader
Mark passages with a concrete problem:
- filler that delays the point;
- vague abstractions where a person, action, mechanism, or consequence is available;
- canned contrasts, conclusions, or rhetorical reveals;
- unsupported authority, puffery, or generic importance claims;
- jargon where plain language is more exact;
- hidden actors or passive voice that obscures responsibility;
- repetitive sentence, paragraph, heading, or list shapes;
- chatbot politeness, sycophancy, and commentary about the response itself;
- technically clean wording that could have come from anyone writing about anything.
Read references/phrases.md when filler, jargon, attribution, or emphasis crutches dominate. Read references/structures.md when syntax, rhythm, agency, or presentation templates dominate. Use references/examples.md when a passage needs a transformation pattern.
A listed phrase or structure is a signal to inspect, not an automatic deletion. Keep it when it carries precise meaning and belongs to the voice.
Complete when: every marked passage has a specific readability or voice diagnosis rather than a general “sounds like AI” label.
3. Rewrite from the reader outward
Apply these moves in order:
- Lead with what the reader came to learn or decide.
- Name concrete actors, actions, evidence, numbers, and consequences.
- Use the shortest accurate words while retaining domain terms the reader needs.
- Prefer active voice when responsibility matters; retain passive voice when the actor is unknown or irrelevant.
- Collapse staged reveals and false contrasts into direct claims.
- Cut modifiers, asides, and scaffolding that add no meaning.
- Group related ideas in the order a reader needs them, not the order the writer discovered them.
- Vary rhythm where repeated shapes feel mechanical. Let important points breathe without manufacturing punchlines.
- Use first person, second person, humor, fragments, analogy, or strong opinion only when they fit the voice contract and improve understanding.
- Replace generic polish with a concrete observation or useful judgment the evidence supports.
Match the scale of the edit to the prose. A short answer may need only a direct opening and one cleaner sentence. A long document may need structural changes.
Complete when: each change makes the prose easier to understand or more recognizably aligned with the writer, and no personality has been invented merely to sound human.
4. Read it as the recipient
Compare the revision with the source for lost facts, shifted confidence, accidental tone changes, and unsupported opinions. Read it aloud or simulate its cadence.
Ask:
- Can the reader find the answer or next action on the first pass?
- Does the wording sound like one person addressing this audience?
- Could a sentence appear unchanged in an unrelated project's writing?
- Does each paragraph earn its place and lead naturally to the next?
- Do sentence and paragraph shapes feel chosen rather than templated?
- Can another word go without losing meaning, warmth, or precision?
Return the finished prose without narrating the edit pass unless the user asked for editorial notes.
Complete when: the writing preserves its contract, no high-signal pattern remains without a reason, and a reader can understand the point without translating agent-speak into human language.