avoid-ai-writing — Claude Code plugin: strip machine-sounding prose
A skill that audits and rewrites prose reading as machine-generated. Useful for READMEs, changelogs, PR descriptions and docs.
/plugin marketplace add wshobson/agents
/plugin install avoid-ai-writing@claude-code-workflowsWhat avoid-ai-writing does
The plugin ships one skill, avoid-ai-writing, with three modes: detect only, rewrite, or edit in place. Under the hood sits a pattern catalog covering formatting, sentence structure, inflation, manufactured credibility, conversational-register tells, machine fingerprints and rhythm. Alongside it are tiered vocabulary tables: 112 word entries across three tiers plus 10 boilerplate phrases.
The author is upfront that it does not classify authorship. The skill opens with published false-positive research, including the Stanford audit where seven commercial detectors flagged 61% of TOEFL essays by non-native English writers. So its flags are writing-quality signals, and they must not decide an academic-integrity, hiring or attribution question. Citations live in skills/avoid-ai-writing/SKILL.md.
It does not impose a house style either. Rewrites may subtract and sharpen, but adding first-person voice, stance or specifics the source never contained is a documented failure mode. Everything is markdown, with no tools or network calls, and the skill body stays under the Codex 8 KB cap with detail in skills/avoid-ai-writing/references/.
What it helps with
- clean boilerplate out of a README before publishing
- rewrite a PR description so it sounds human
- spot machine phrasing in a changelog or release notes
- tighten documentation prose without changing meaning
- check a blog draft for stock phrases
Example prompts for the agent
- audit README.md for machine-sounding prose, detect only
- rewrite the PR description in docs/pr.md, cut the inflation
- edit changelog.md in place, keep the style
How to install avoid-ai-writing
Plugin marketplace
/plugin marketplace add wshobson/agents/plugin install avoid-ai-writing@claude-code-workflowsStep by step, with commands for each platform: Claude Code plugins: marketplaces, installing, and building your own
Questions about avoid-ai-writing
How do I install avoid-ai-writing in Claude?
Through the marketplace: first /plugin marketplace add wshobson/agents, then /plugin install avoid-ai-writing@claude-code-workflows.
What does avoid-ai-writing do?
It audits and rewrites text that reads as generated. Three modes: detect only, rewrite, and edit in place.
Does the skill decide who wrote a text?
No. Its flags are writing-quality signals, and the author states plainly they must not settle an academic-integrity, hiring or attribution question.
Source text
avoid-ai-writing · MIT
# Avoid AI Writing A markdown-only skill for auditing and rewriting prose that reads as machine-generated. It covers READMEs, changelogs, release notes, PR descriptions, docs, blog posts, and social copy. ## Disclosure This plugin is submitted by the maintainer of the upstream [`conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing`](https://github.com/conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing) skill (MIT), from which its catalog and vocabulary tables are derived. ## What it includes - One skill, `avoid-ai-writing`, with detect-only, rewrite, and edit-in-place modes - A pattern catalog covering formatting, sentence structure, inflation, manufactured credibility, conversational-register tells, machine fingerprints, and rhythm - Tiered vocabulary tables: 112 word entries across three tiers plus 10 boilerplate phrases - Six context profiles with a per-rule tolerance matrix, and five voice profiles ## What it does not do It does not classify authorship. The skill opens with the published false-positive research, including the Stanford audit that found seven commercial detectors flagged 61% of TOEFL essays by non-native English writers, and says plainly that its flags are writing-quality signals that must not decide an academic-integrity, hiring, or attribution question. Citations are in `skills/avoid-ai-writing/SKILL.md`. It also does not impose a house style. Rewrites may subtract and sharpen. Adding first-person voice, stance, or specifics the source never contained is a documented failure mode, listed in the skill body as something a rewrite may never introduce. ## Portability Markdown only, no tools or network calls. The skill body stays under the Codex 8 KB cap with detail in `skills/avoid-ai-writing/references/`. The upstream repo separately ships an optional MIT-licensed offline detector for mechanical checking; nothing here requires it. ## Documentation - `skills/avoid-ai-writing/SKILL.md`: modes, the audit pass, triage, output formats - `skills/avoid-ai-writing/references/pattern-catalog.md`: the pattern catalog - `skills/avoid-ai-writing/references/word-tiers.md`: the tiered vocabulary tables - `skills/avoid-ai-writing/references/profiles.md`: context and voice profiles
© Conor Bronsdon · MIT · wshobson/agents
