writing-scan

name	writing:scan
description	Detect AI writing tropes in repository prose. Use `audit` to scan a directory or glob (READMEs, docs, skill files, proposals) for slop already committed and gate on it, reporting every match with file, line, and column. Use `score` to measure trope density of one input on a per-1000-word basis, compare two drafts, or score code comments separately. Not for rewriting a single input.
argument-hint	audit <path...> | score <input>
user-invocable	true
allowed-tools	["Bash","Read"]

Scan

Detect AI writing tropes already present in prose. Two modes share the detection engine (detection/scan.ts), the same categories the tropes hook enforces on new edits. To transform a single input instead, use writing:rewrite.

bun ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/scan.ts audit "docs/**/*.md"
bun ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/scan.ts score path/to/draft.md

Run either subcommand with --help for its flags.

Exit Codes

audit exits non-zero when it finds any trope, so it gates in CI or a pre-commit check. score is informational and always exits 0.

Audit

audit <path...> walks each directory or glob, keeps prose files (.md, .markdown, .txt, .mdx, .rst, .adoc), and skips node_modules, .git, wordlists, and memory/plan paths. There is no implicit whole-repo scan. Pass an explicit path.

Each violation prints as path:line:col: category: message. A summary table follows on stderr with per-category counts and the noisiest files.

Audit is report-only. Fix flagged files with writing:rewrite or direct edits at the reported positions.

Score

score <input> takes one file path, inline text, or stdin and reports trope density per category.

Word count is word tokens (/[a-zA-Z]+/) over the text with code stripped, matching how the wordlists tokenize. Density is hits / (wordCount / 1000), so it reads as hits per 1000 words. A weighted group (marketing verbs, soft phrasing) counts as one hit when it crosses its threshold.

The table sorts by density.

Comments

For non-prose source files, single-line comments (//, #) are extracted and scored as a separate comments group, so prose-only patterns apply to them without an AST. Prose files skip this because their fenced code blocks are already stripped.

Voice Delta

--voice-delta appends a table of voice rate features (first-person rate, sentence length, backtick density, and friends) beside the rates from the local voice baseline. Each feature carries a provenance label: skill-prescribed drift means tune the skill, skill-encouraged deficits mean the skill is under-applied, and ungoverned features are genuine voice signal. The register check skips inputs too short or too markdown-heavy to compare against the PR-body baseline.

Custom Vocabulary

--wordlist <path> compiles an extra stemmed vocabulary file (one term per line, # comments allowed) and scores it as a custom vocabulary category in every group, for context-specific terms a general wordlist would not flag.

Single-Input Mode

writing:rewrite and other callers invoke scan.ts --input to lint one input against the audit categories without walking a directory. It reads a file path, inline text, or stdin and prints matches as line:col: category: message with no path prefix, exiting non-zero on any finding. This is the audit gate over a single input.