You've asked AI to write something, then immediately thought "oh, this was definitely written by AI," right? There's a name for that feeling. The industry calls it AI slop. Repetitive sentence structures, predictable word choices, an unnaturally smooth tone — when these pile up, the writing feels "mass-produced."
What is this about?
It's the "anti-AI slop" writing stack that Ben Tossell (@bentossell) shared in his newsletter Ben's Builds #2. Ben himself says he "hates AI writing," yet admits he uses AI when he's stuck staring at a blank page. The solution he found is a combination of three tools.
Let's break them down one by one.
1. Every AI Style Guide — "A manual for teaching AI your writing style"
It's an AI style guide framework created by the media company Every. The core idea is simple: instead of telling AI what to write, you tell it how to write.
Without a style guide, AI converges on "safe, average, decent writing." That's exactly what slop is. A style guide pulls AI away from the average and pushes it toward your unique quirks.
Here are the key items that go into a guide:
| Item | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Voice & tone | Describe your voice in 3–5 bullets | "Like chatting at a cafe, not writing a report" |
| Signature moves | Techniques you frequently use | "Start with a specific anecdote" |
| Anti-patterns | Things to absolutely avoid | "Never say 'revolutionary'" |
| Example sentences | Good vs. bad pairings | "This is right / this is wrong because..." |
| Revision checklist | Final review criteria | "No more than 3 abstract nouns in a row" |
What's interesting is how you make one. Rather than writing "I have this style" yourself, having AI interview you turns out to be more effective. When AI asks "which of these two sentences feels more natural to you?", it surfaces specific preferences better than abstract descriptions.
2. Tropes.fyi — "A dictionary that names and shames 33 AI writing patterns"
Created by Ossama Chaib, this site is a directory that names AI's repetitive writing patterns and publicly calls them out. Currently, 33+ tropes are registered across 6 categories.
Just a few examples will give you the picture:
Top 5 AI slop patterns
Negative Parallelism — "This isn't X. It's Y." The most common AI writing pattern.
Delve and Friends — AI-exclusive words like "delve," "leverage," "robust," "streamline."
Em-Dash Addiction — Once a stylish punctuation mark, now a red flag because AI overuses it —.
Rhetorical QA — "The result? It was shocking." The pattern of asking and answering your own question.
Fractal Summaries — Summarize in the intro, summarize in the body, summarize again in the conclusion. Same thing three times.
The site offers three tools:
- ai;dr — Takes long AI-written text and reverse-engineers the original prompt. Reveals that a 3,000-word piece was really just "write about X."
- AI Vetter — Paste a URL and it classifies the content as Human / AI-assisted / Suspicious / Pure AI Slop. Runs on pure regex + frequency analysis, no LLM.
- Deslopify — Paste text and it highlights AI-sounding parts in diff style, suggesting alternative sentences.
And all these patterns are compiled into a single file called tropes.md. Drop this file into your AI system prompt, and the AI automatically avoids those patterns.
3. jackbutcher.md — "Writing formula extracted from 50,000 tweets"
It's a markdown file that analyzed ~50,000 tweets from Jack Butcher (founder of Visualize Value) over 6 years and reverse-engineered 13,962 high-performing patterns.
Here are the key mechanics this file identifies:
- 6 rhetorical moves — Contrast frames, reframes, mathematical quantification, uncomfortable truths, compressed wisdom, deadpan humor
- 12 contrast frames — Reframes account for 23% of top tweets. Parallel declarations, paradoxes, conditional reveals, etc.
- 11 word-level techniques — Alliterative contrast, rhythmic matching, antithesis, internal rhyme, etc.
- Dropping the period increases engagement by ~20% — backed by data
Usage is straightforward. Paste the file into an AI conversation and say "write about X in this style." Jack Butcher himself released the file as open source, saying "the file isn't the moat — the person is."
What's actually changing?
Using these three tools separately is just okay. The real change happens when you combine them. Ben Tossell himself said "packaging these three into a single skill is my next project."
| Just asking AI to write | After applying the 3-tool stack | |
|---|---|---|
| Style | "Safe average" — could've been written by anyone | Reflects your unique tone and rhythm |
| AI patterns | "This isn't X. It's Y." on repeat | 33 tropes automatically avoided |
| Structure | Predictable intro-body-conclusion | Varied rhetorical structures: contrast, reframe, etc. |
| Editing time | Full rewrite needed | Minor edits sufficient |
| Reader reaction | "AI wrote this" | "Did you actually write this yourself?" |
"I hate AI writing, and consider myself a poor writer. I don't use AI writing much except to get me off the blank landing page problem."
— Ben Tossell, Ben's Builds #2
I like Ben's approach because it's honest. He doesn't use AI output as-is — he uses it only as scaffolding and reworks from there. These three tools raise the quality of that scaffolding, reducing the rework needed.
The essentials: How to get started
- Start by downloading tropes.md
Get the file from tropes.fyi/tropes-md and add it to your AI tool's system prompt (custom instructions). For ChatGPT, put it in "Customize ChatGPT." For Claude, add it to project settings. This alone eliminates the most obvious AI patterns. - Create your own writing style guide
Reference Every's guide to write your own style guide. If writing it yourself is hard, ask AI to "interview me about my writing style." Give it 5–10 of your past writings and AI will extract patterns and ask questions. Compile the results and you have your personal style guide. - Reference jackbutcher.md
Get the file from GitHub and read through it. You don't need to follow everything. Understand rhetorical structures like "contrast frames" and "reframes," then add only what fits your writing to your style guide. - Combine all three into one file
Merge tropes.md + your style guide + relevant parts of jackbutcher.md into a single file and add it to your AI system prompt. For Claude Code, put it inCLAUDE.md. For Cursor, in.cursorrules. It'll apply across the whole project. - Final check with Deslopify
After finishing your writing, run it through Deslopify at tropes.fyi for a final check. If any AI patterns remain, it highlights them in diff style and suggests alternatives. After this step, slop is virtually gone.
Note: These tools don't write for you
These tools only raise the starting quality of AI output. Reading the final piece, confirming it sounds like you, and fixing anything unnatural — that's still on the human. Ben Tossell himself said he only uses AI output as scaffolding and rewrites from there.
