| name | ai-tells |
| description | Reviews any draft for AI writing tells and produces a clean rewrite. Catches vocabulary fingerprints (delve, tapestry, leverage, robust, multifaceted, navigate, foster), structural fingerprints (negative parallelism like "It's not X, it's Y", bullet-everything, Title Case headings, adjective triads), tone fingerprints ("Great question!", "I'd be happy to help", "In conclusion"), and punctuation fingerprints (em dash overuse, knowledge-cutoff disclaimers). Use this skill whenever the user asks to humanize, de-AI, edit, polish, or sanity-check writing, including phrases like "does this sound like ChatGPT", "make this less AI", "humanize this", "edit this draft", "remove the AI smell", "is this AI-y", or "clean this up". Also trigger when the user pastes a draft and asks for feedback on the writing without naming AI specifically. |
AI tells
A second-pass checker that flags AI writing tells in a draft and produces a clean rewrite. The catalogue is compressed from Wikipedia's "Signs of AI writing" page plus the goblin-era 2026 update.
Modes
Two modes:
- Audit. Flag every tell, name the category, suggest a replacement. No rewrite.
- Rewrite. Produce a clean version with all tells removed, preserving meaning, intent, and voice.
Default to audit + rewrite unless the user asks for one mode.
Catalogue lookups
All section references below live in .claude/output-styles/house-style.md. Walk these sections during Pass 1:
- Vocabulary fingerprints →
house-style.md § Banned vocabulary (Tier 1 / 2 / 3 / 4)
- Structural fingerprints →
house-style.md § Structural rules and § Banned sentence patterns
- Tone fingerprints → sub-bullets in
house-style.md § Banned sentence patterns (sycophantic openers, throat-clearing, closing phrases)
- Punctuation fingerprints →
house-style.md § Punctuation and typography
- Content and analysis tells →
house-style.md § Banned analysis patterns (includes the 12 humanizer gap patterns)
Workflow
- Read the input fully. Don't skim. Density and combination matter more than any single tell.
- Pass 1, flag. Walk every category in
## Catalogue lookups. For each match, note the phrase, the category, and a proposed replacement.
- Pass 2, score. Estimate tells per 100 words. Above 3 is heavy. Above 6, recommend a rewrite from scratch rather than editing.
- Pass 3, rewrite. Maintain the writer's intent and voice. Don't substitute one set of AI tells for another.
- Pass 4, self-audit. Read the rewrite. Ask: what still feels AI? Fix it. Repeat until clean.
Apply during Pass 1: if a sentence still reads cleanly without its opener phrase, delete the phrase; if the sentence collapses without the opener (sycophantic / throat-clearing / closing — see house-style.md § Banned sentence patterns), delete the whole sentence.
Output format
Return three blocks:
1. Audit. A bulleted list of every tell flagged. Format: [category] "exact phrase" → "proposed replacement".
2. Density score. "X tells per 100 words. Light / Moderate / Heavy / Unsalvageable."
3. Clean rewrite. The final version with all tells removed.
If the input scores Unsalvageable, skip the rewrite and tell the user the draft needs to be redone from a fresh outline rather than edited.
What this skill does not do
- It does not detect whether a text was AI-generated. AI detectors are unreliable. This skill assumes the input may be AI-assisted and cleans it regardless.
- It does not substitute for human editing. It catches surface tells. It cannot detect hollow thinking or missing voice. Those need a human pass.
- It does not produce style. It produces absence of AI style. Pair it with a voice guide for the affirmative side.
Source and credit
Built by Kyle Balmer at AI with Kyle. MIT licensed. Last updated 2026-05-04. Free to use, share, and modify. If the list dates, update it.
