de-sloplisted

# /de-slop — Strip the Machine Layer Surgically remove AI-slop patterns from a piece of writing without flattening its voice or changing what it says. This is an **edit, not a rewrite.** ## The reference If your setup has a house anti-slop ruleset, load it — the durable tells below stand alone otherwise. The durable tells (weight these; word-blocklists date fast): - **"X, not Y" antithesis** — the #1 tell. Cut the "not"; state the thing; trust the reader. Keep at most one, and only if it does real semantic work. - **"It's not just X, it's Y" / "not only… but also"** — delete; say Y. - **Balanced see-saw pairs** — make the sentences asymmetric. - **Reflexive triplets** — break at least one; vary item length. - **Em-dash punchlines** — ≤2 per piece; swap for colons, commas, or periods. - **Throat-clearing openers · puffery · restate-conclusions · hedges** — cut. ## The process 1. **Read the piece and the ruleset.** Name the author's voice and the intent — those are preserved. 2. **Scan and count** the tells: "X, not Y" contrasts, balanced pairs, triplets, em-dashes, filler adverbs, throat-clearing. 3. **Cut surgically** — the fewest words that remove each tell. Keep the meaning, the voice, and any single device that's genuinely earned (a signature contrast used once to make a real point stays). 4. **Earn the space back** with specificity where a cut leaves a gap — a concrete noun, a real detail. Never an invented statistic. 5. **Run the pre-ship check:** contrasts + balance