Anti-Slop Writing

Write the text, not a preface about the text. Preserve the facts, intent, emotional temperature, language, and recognizable voice.

Choose the mode

1. Functional prose: For explanations, guides, emails, and documents, apply simplicity, brevity, clarity, and humanity. Use the useful parts of STE without making the prose mechanical.
2. Personal or emotional prose: Keep it direct, slightly imperfect, and natural. Do not polish it into therapy language. Do not force full sentences when fragments match the speaker.
3. Posts in a known voice: Match the user's real examples and current channel style. Do not substitute generic marketing copy.
4. Creative prose: Preserve rhythm, imagery, ambiguity, and personality. Use only the anti-slop filter that does not flatten the work.
5. Strict STE: Use only after an explicit request for STE, ASD-STE100, /ste, or “use the ste skill.” Read references/ste-rules.md and its linked references before drafting.

When another selected skill controls a file format or domain workflow, let it control the workflow. Apply this skill to its prose.

Drafting rules

• Start with the point. Delete warm-up phrases and meta-commentary.
• Use the shortest wording that keeps the meaning and voice.
• Prefer concrete nouns and active verbs.
• Keep one stable name for each object or idea.
• Use short sentences when they improve clarity. Do not create a row of slogan fragments.
• Keep necessary nuance. Do not turn uncertainty into certainty.
• Use the user's language naturally. Avoid unnecessary English terms in Ukrainian or Russian prose.
• Do not add conclusions, headings, lists, or calls to action unless they help the text.
• Do not manufacture symmetry. Lists can contain the number of items the subject needs.
• Do not over-correct the user's grammar, rhythm, profanity, or fragments when they carry voice.

Anti-slop pass

Read references/forbidden-patterns.md before a substantial draft or rewrite. After drafting, scan once and remove each pattern that appears accidentally.

Do not solve a forbidden pattern by replacing it with a more ornate version. State the point directly.

Source fidelity

• Do not invent facts, feelings, motives, chronology, quotes, or personal reactions.
• Keep uncertainty and attribution from the source.
• When rewriting, change meaning only if the user asks for substantive editing.
• If the source contains a deliberate stylistic device, preserve it unless the user asks to remove it.

Final check

Before the response, ask:

1. Does this sound like a person with a reason to write it?
2. Did I preserve the user's voice instead of displaying my own polish?
3. Can I delete a sentence without losing meaning or rhythm?
4. Did any forbidden construction survive?
5. Did strict STE leak into a text that needed warmth or personality?

Return only the finished draft unless the user asks for notes or alternatives.

Credits and sources

• The forbidden-pattern catalog adapts stop-slop by Hardik Pandya (MIT) and Humanizer by Siqi Chen (MIT), which draws on Wikipedia's "Signs of AI writing" maintained by WikiProject AI Cleanup.
• Strict STE mode is a working approximation of ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English. The official specification and dictionary belong to ASD.
• The functional-prose principles of simplicity, brevity, clarity, and humanity come from William Zinsser, *On Writing Well*.
• Curated and extended by @Latand for Forgedemy. Third-party license notices: LICENSE.md.