Humanizer — the anti-slop gate (hard, reviewer-enforced)
Every piece of prose in this repo (cards, aid copy, hub text, captions) passes this gate before the operator sees it. Self-certification is void: a drafter’s claim of “humanizer pass done” counts for nothing; the reviewer greps and reads for the patterns below and FAILs the artifact on hits.
The tell taxonomy
1. Antithesis tic (the big one). LLM prose leans on negation-contrast pairs to sound incisive:
- “X is not Y” / “X is not Y; it is Z” / “It’s not X, it’s Y”
- “not because X but because Y”
- “not only X; also Y” / “not just X”
- “X, not Y” appended to a clause (“the locations, not the wording”)
- Aphorism headings shaped as denials (“Naming is not curing”)
One instance can be a thesis. A dozen is a verbal tic that reads machine-made. Budget: at most ONE deliberate antithesis per card, the one that carries the module’s thesis. Everything else states what a thing IS or DOES, in the affirmative. Rewrites that keep the meaning:
| Slop | Fix |
|---|---|
| ”Ranked X because it fits the stereotype, not because base rates were used" | "Ranked X because it fits the stereotype; base rates never enter the ranking" |
| "Coherence is not coverage" | "Coherence outruns coverage" |
| "The heuristics are not chosen; they fire" | "The heuristics fire on their own" |
| "That prior is the point" | "The drill runs on that prior” |
2. Punchy fragment cadence. Three short declaratives in a row for drama (“Ease is high. The story locks. Nobody checks.”). Allowed rarely; two in a row max; never twice in one section.
3. Em/en dashes. Zero, anywhere (already gated).
4. Stock LLM phrases. delve, crucial, robust, seamless, landscape, leverage (verb), “it’s important to note”, “in essence”, “at its core”, “the key insight”, “put simply”, rule-of-three adjective stacks (“fast, fluent, and wrong” — two items or a real list).
5. Formula echo. The same sentence skeleton recurring across sections or cards (“X is the exhibit” / “X is the training aid” / “X is the point”). One skeleton, one use, one card.
6. Verb monotony (operator, 2026-07-30). “Name the X” as the universal imperative. Rotate real verbs: identify, state, write down, label, record, point to, pick out. Reserve “name” for when the student is literally producing a name. Same rule for any imperative that starts repeating.
7. Author-to-reviewer leakage. Sentences that defend the card instead of teaching the student (“Same logic, different drill”).
Reviewer procedure
- Grep:
is not |are not |not because |not only |It is not|; it is |, not— read every hit, judge against the budget. Grep the stock-phrase list. Count fragment runs. - Read one full section aloud-in-the-head for cadence. If it sounds like a keynote, flag it.
- Verdict: over-budget antithesis or any stock phrase = FAIL with line numbers.
Plain negation in ordinary instructions (“do not search ahead”, “if they are not already on the page”) is normal English and exempt. The gate targets rhetorical contrast, not the word “not”.