# Removing Ai Tells > Identify and remove phrasing, structure, and word choices that signal AI authorship. Runs iterative passes through fresh voice-agent instances with the orchestrator acting as gatekeeper on every change. Use on a cover letter before submission, or on any prose that has to read as human-written. - **Type:** Skill - **Install:** `agentstack add skill-aaddrick-slushpile-removing-ai-tells` - **Verified:** Yes — security-reviewed for prompt injection and unsafe behavior - **Seller:** [aaddrick](https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/aaddrick) - **Installs:** 0 - **Category:** [Search](https://agentstack.voostack.com/c/search) - **Latest version:** 0.1.0 - **License:** MIT - **Upstream author:** [aaddrick](https://github.com/aaddrick) - **Source:** https://github.com/aaddrick/slushpile/tree/main/skills/removing-ai-tells - **Website:** https://github.com/aaddrick/slushpile#readme ## Install ```sh agentstack add skill-aaddrick-slushpile-removing-ai-tells ``` Requires the [AgentStack CLI](https://agentstack.voostack.com/docs/cli). Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible agent. ## About # Removing AI Tells Iterative passes over a draft, removing the patterns that make a fatigued reader think "a machine wrote this" before they consciously work out why. **Announce at start:** "Removing AI tells from $FILE. Working on a copy, three passes maximum." **Arguments:** - `$1` — path to the file to clean **Example:** ``` /slushpile:removing-ai-tells applications/Acme/Engineering/Staff-SRE/cover_letter.txt ``` ## Why This Is Separate From the Voice Agent The voice agent writes in a person's voice. That is a different job from hunting a specific list of patterns, and combining them produces worse results at both. A voice agent asked to "write well and also avoid these forty patterns" will trade one against the other silently. Running the passes separately means each one has a single objective, and the gatekeeper between them can see exactly what changed and why. The gatekeeper is the point. **About a third of what a tell-hunting pass flags is doing real work in the document.** Applied without review, this process reliably makes prose worse — flatter, more uniform, and stripped of exactly the moves that made it sound like a person. That is the failure mode this skill is built around, not an edge case. ## Prerequisites - The file to clean - The voice agent named in `preferences.yaml` under `voice.agent` (default: `aaddrick-voice`) - The user's voice agent definition. A habit documented there outranks this entire checklist. ## The Process ### 1. Work on a copy Never edit the original. ```bash cp cover_letter.txt cover_letter.v2.txt ``` Keeping the previous version is what lets you revert a rejected change precisely rather than re-editing from memory. ### 2. First pass Send the copy to a **fresh** instance of the voice agent with the checklist below. Ask it to edit the file directly and return a summary of every change with its rationale. The rationale is not optional. A change you cannot evaluate is a change you have to accept or revert blind. ### 3. Gatekeeper review Read the updated file. For each change: accept or reject. **Accept** when the change removes a real tell without losing meaning or voice. **Reject** when: - The flagged pattern was doing structural work — a transition between sections, a precision qualifier that changes meaning, a section opener that motivates what follows - The removal changes the meaning or weakens the argument - The fix introduces a different problem - The pattern is documented in the user's voice agent as one of their own habits Revert rejected changes directly. **Write down why you rejected each one** — the next pass gets that list and will otherwise make the same change again. ### 4. Feedback pass Send remaining issues to a **new** voice agent instance. Always fresh, never resumed: an agent that has already defended a change will defend it again rather than re-evaluating it. Include what needs fixing, and what the previous pass got wrong. ### 5. Stop at three passes Iterate steps 3 and 4. Where you and the agent disagree, the gatekeeper wins. Three passes is the ceiling. Past that the changes are churn — synonym swaps and sentence reorderings that trade one phrasing for an equivalent one. If the draft still reads as machine-written after three passes, the problem is the content, not the phrasing, and no amount of editing at this level reaches it. ### 6. Punctuation pass, if the voice calls for it Check the user's voice agent first. If it documents an absence — no em dashes across the whole corpus, for instance — run a dedicated pass replacing every instance with a contextual rewrite: commas, periods, semicolons, colons, parentheses, or a restructured sentence. If the voice agent shows the user does use em dashes, **skip this step entirely.** Removing a punctuation mark the person actually uses moves the prose away from their voice, which is the opposite of the objective. ### 7. Check the replacements Verify each replacement preserves the grammatical relationship. Flag weak ones: - A comma creating a restrictive appositive where the original was nonrestrictive - A colon overloading a sentence that then pivots with "but" - A period splitting a clause that depended on the one before it Send flagged replacements back with an explanation of the relationship that needs preserving. ## The Checklist Send this to the voice agent on each pass. ### Vocabulary Watchlist: *landscape, paradigm, ecosystem, leverage, robust, comprehensive, crucial, facilitate, utilize, streamline, underscore, delve, harness, illuminate, bolster, tapestry, realm, beacon, cacophony.* Also: formal register that does not match the rest of the piece, and generic language where a specific example would land harder. ### Sentence and paragraph patterns - **Uniform sentence length.** The strongest signal there is. Human writing varies; generated writing converges on a comfortable middle. - Repetitive structures, especially subject-verb-object in sequence - Overly neat parallelism in consecutive sentence pairs - Triplet structures used repeatedly as a rhetorical device. One or two in a piece is natural. - Participial phrase endings: *"The update shipped, revealing a deeper issue."* - Passive voice where active is more natural - Lists where every item follows the same syntactic template - Even, unvaried paragraph length ### Rhetorical devices - The *"it's not X, it's Y"* reframe, and its compressed variants: *"Not X. Y."* as a two-sentence punch, *"X, not Y"* as a comma correction, *"X isn't just Y"* as a setup - *"Not X"* as emphasis: *"Not a benchmark number."* State the positive claim. - Staccato fragment pairs as punch. One fragment is fine; two or more back to back is a rhythm device. - Paired beats: *"That's X. It's also Y."* - Announcing frames: *"Here's the mechanism that makes X powerful:"* - Dramatic openers: *"The takeaway:"*, *"The bottom line:"* ### Filler and hedging - Balanced or hedged language where the author would commit to a position - Transition filler: *Moreover, Furthermore, Additionally, It's worth noting* - The whole *"it's worth [verb]-ing"* family: *worth noting, worth pausing on, worth sitting with* - *"It's important to note that", "generally speaking", "to some extent", "from a broader perspective"* - Authority claims: *"Let's be clear", "To be sure", "The reality is", "Make no mistake"* ### Structural redundancy - Bookend summaries that restate the intro instead of advancing - Sentences that summarize what was just said - Summary openers: *Overall, In summary, In conclusion* - *"From X to Y"* scene-setting: *"From simple scripts to full pipelines..."* - Cross-section repetition ### Significance labeling - *"That's the gap between policy and reality."* If the fact is strong, it lands without a label. - *"That changes the framing considerably."* Let the fact do it. - Vague gestural conclusions: *"says a lot about where they are"*, *"is the most telling thing about"*. Either say what it tells you or let it stand alone. ### Post-edit verification Two errors that only appear *after* editing, and are worth a dedicated read: - **Orphaned pronouns.** *"It builds..."* where the referent was in a sentence that got cut. - **Broken ordering.** Text claiming A happens before B when the surrounding edits reversed them. ## Gatekeeper Principles Not every pattern on the checklist is always wrong. Telling the two apart is the whole job. **Real tells — remove:** - Section openers that restate the intro - Announcing frames before content that speaks for itself - Significance labels after a paragraph that already landed - Filler qualifiers - Watchlist vocabulary where a plainer word works **Structural work disguised as a tell — keep:** - Transitions that connect sections. *"That's the gap these files close."* looks like a significance label and is carrying the reader between two ideas. - Precision qualifiers that change meaning. *"structurally"* before an analogy is not filler. - Section openers that motivate what follows. - Colons that set up a mechanism. - **Deliberate scope-escalation fragments.** *"$30M CAPEX. Four facilities. Seven clients."* This is a human writing move and frequently the strongest line in a cover letter. A tell-hunting pass will flag it every single time. Reject it every single time. - **Punchy inventory lists** that read clipped on purpose. Adding the missing subject to each item kills the delivery. - **Anything the user's voice agent documents as their habit.** The voice agent outranks this checklist without exception. Someone whose corpus is full of triplets keeps their triplets — the pattern is a tell in general and a fingerprint in their case. ## Prompt Template ``` Read [file path]. Review the entire draft for AI tells: [paste the checklist] Edit [file path] directly. Be surgical. Change only what needs changing, and do not rewrite sections that already sound human. Preserve the argument structure and every factual claim. Do not flag or change: [the rejections from the previous pass, with reasons] After editing, summarize every change and why you made it. ``` ## Anti-Patterns - **Do not run this without a gatekeeper.** An unreviewed pass makes prose flatter and more uniform, which is the same direction as the problem it is solving. - **Do not run more than three passes.** After three the changes are churn. - **Do not resume a voice agent instance between passes.** It will defend its previous changes rather than re-evaluate them. - **Do not run the punctuation pass without checking the voice agent first.** Removing punctuation the person genuinely uses moves the prose away from their voice. - **Do not apply this to a resume the same way as prose.** A resume bullet is a compressed form and legitimately looks patterned. Use `/slushpile:application-builder`'s humanization step for resumes; use this for letters and prose. - **Do not let this run on quoted material.** Anything in quotation marks, any job description text, and any product name stays verbatim. ## Source & license This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code. - **Author:** [aaddrick](https://github.com/aaddrick) - **Source:** [aaddrick/slushpile](https://github.com/aaddrick/slushpile) - **License:** MIT - **Homepage:** https://github.com/aaddrick/slushpile#readme Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above. ## Pricing - **Free** — Free ## Security capabilities Automated source analysis of v0.1.0 — what this tool can access: - **Network access:** no - **Filesystem access:** no - **Shell / process execution:** no - **Environment & secrets:** no - **Dynamic code execution:** no *"Yes" means the capability is present in the source — more access means more to trust, not that it is unsafe.* ## Versions - **0.1.0** — security scan: passed — Imported from the upstream source. ## Links - Listing page: https://agentstack.voostack.com/l/skill-aaddrick-slushpile-removing-ai-tells - Seller: https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/aaddrick - Browse the marketplace: https://agentstack.voostack.com/browse --- Listed on AgentStack — the marketplace for AI agent skills and MCP servers. 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