Check Ai Writing

---
name: check-ai-writing
description: The sole de-slop pass — AI tells, metaphors and metaphorical verbs, synthetic cadence, template smell, and the additive distinctiveness check. Anything whose cause is genericness. TRIGGER when de-slopping a draft, hunting AI tells or generic SaaS phrasing, or when the editor loads it for the check-for-ai-writing stage. DO NOT TRIGGER for within-sentence clarity or economy (edit-sentences), section joins (check-structure), or claim backing (check-claims).
---

# Check for AI writing

One Process, one owner: this is the only pass that removes slop. It fails a line for **genericness** — copy an AI or a fill-in-the-blank template would produce, and copy any competitor could paste onto their own page. Everything else about a line belongs to another check.

Three steps remove what should not be there; the fourth is additive — it fails on what is absent. Passing the removal checks is not enough. Clear-and-forgettable loses.

This pass returns the tell with what makes it slop and a suggested fix, and never mutates the draft — the writer folds the accepted fix into the next numbered draft. Full armory: [references/ai-tells.md](references/ai-tells.md).

## 1. AI-tell phrases

### Kill every machine-written phrasing
Fail any AI tell — *delve, that being said, it's worth noting, at its core, in today's [anything], this begs the question, navigate the landscape*, and the overused verbs and adjectives in the armory. Swap for the plain word or cut.

## 2. SaaS slop and empty superlatives

### Cut words that describe everything and so describe nothing
Fail revolutionize, supercharge, unlock, elevate, game-changing, next-level, seamless, robust, cutting-edge, world-class. Fail any unbacked superlative (*the best way to…*, *the leading…* with nothing behind it). The replacement is always a specific number, a named customer, a concrete outcome, a real timeline.

## 3. AI structure and metaphor

### Fail the giveaway shapes even when the words are clean
Fail *"whether you're X, Y, or Z,"* the additive *"it's not just X, it's Y"* inflation, a sentence opening *"By [verb-ing], you can…"*, an elaborate *"think of X as…"* metaphor, and metaphorical verbs borrowed from unrelated fields. Fail three parallel same-shape clauses in a row.
Example: the contrarian reframe "X isn't A, it's B" — a real claim that corrects the reader — is legitimate, not this tell.

## 4. Distinctiveness

### Fail any line a competitor could paste unchanged
This is the one check that fails on absence. Cut each line and ask whether it would be missed. If a competitor could paste it onto their own page unchanged, it is forgettable — fail. A draft can clear steps 1–3 and still die here by being merely inoffensive. This is the counterweight that stops de-slopping from sanding a draft down to mush.
Exempt standard action copy (a plain "Start free" CTA), legal lines, prices, and factual labels — these are shared by design and never fail for being paste-able.

Verification: every flagged line named with what makes it generic; the distinctiveness pass run on every line, not only the ones that tripped steps 1–3.

## Voice — sounds like this product

Checked against the product's Voice.md (which names the WHO speaking).

- Voice match — the is/is-not core, lexicon, and register hold. IF Voice.md is absent or provisional: check against clear/persuasive/concise instead and flag that no confirmed voice was used.
- One voice — consistent end to end. Fail a formal-casual shift mid-piece, a person swing (you drifting to we drifting to the company), or tone whiplash.
- Terminology — the product's own words used, its avoided words absent, never a competitor's word for the thing.

The outside tell inventory: [references/no-ai-slop/SKILL.md](references/no-ai-slop/SKILL.md) — run its checks alongside [references/ai-tells.md](references/ai-tells.md).