The problem
Text drafted with AI carries habits that readers pick up on, and a press pitch that reads as machine-written is an easy one for a journalist to skip.
Write the rules down once as a skill, and anyone on the team can run the same pass on their own drafts.
The habits to look for
Strongest signals first. The examples are the sort of thing an advocacy org’s drafts throw up.
- The reflex contrast. “This isn’t just a sanctuary, it’s a second chance.” Say what the contrast was pointing at: “The sanctuary took in 240 animals last year.”
- Everything in threes. “A bold, ambitious, and visionary campaign.” One word that carries information will do: “A campaign to ban cages in three states.”
- A narrow vocabulary. The words change with each model generation. Drafts from 2023 and 2024 lean on delve, pivotal and tapestry, while this year’s lean on foster, leverage, multifaceted, prioritize and quietly. Swap in ordinary words where they cluster.
- Dodging “is”. “The sanctuary serves as a refuge for rescued hens.” Plain verbs read better: “The sanctuary is a refuge for rescued hens.”
- Telling the reader what matters. “It’s important to note that” and “it’s worth mentioning” can both go.
Wikipedia’s WikiProject AI Cleanup keeps a much longer catalogue in Signs of AI writing, built up from cleaning AI text out of the encyclopedia. Take what fits your own writing.
The habits shift as the models change. Em dashes were the best-known tell until autumn 2026, when the newest models stopped using them, and Wikipedia’s editors moved them to their list of historical signs on 7 October 2026. A tell that was everywhere last year can drop out of this year’s drafts, and new ones turn up, so treat the five above as a snapshot and go back to the catalogue now and then. That is the reason the prompt below points at the page instead of listing the rules.
Two rules that keep it usable
Put both of these in before anything else, because a humanizer without them does damage.
Keep every fact. The skill must not drop or invent a number, name, date, or claim. Vagueness is itself one of the tells, so the edited version should come out at least as specific as the draft.
Do not over-scrub. These habits appear in AI writing because they appear in human writing first. Strip every one on sight and the result reads stiff and evasive, which gives the game away just as fast. One “however” is fine. Tell the skill to stop when the text sounds like a person.
Ask your assistant to set it up
You do not have to build this yourself, or even write the rules out. Point your assistant at the catalogue and ask it to do both. It knows its own menus, which move around more often than any guide can keep up with.
Something like this works:
Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing and build me
a reusable skill that edits those habits out of a draft.
Two rules it has to follow. Keep every fact, number, name and date exactly as
written. Do not over-scrub: stripping every habit on sight reads as artificial
too, so stop when the text sounds like a person.
Set it up as a reusable skill in this app, walk me through anything you need
me to click, and tell me what to say to run it later.If your assistant cannot open web pages on your plan, paste the habits listed above into the prompt instead.
Every app has its own word for it. Claude calls them skills, ChatGPT uses custom GPTs or project instructions, and Gemini calls them Gems. If your assistant seems unsure what you mean, use its own word. What each plan and account allows differs, so check what yours offers.
Use it, then check it
Ask for it by name on a draft: “run the humanizer on this.” Read the two versions side by side and check that no fact moved and nothing was quietly added.
Try that on a page you wrote yourself before you trust it with a funder report. Where it went too far or not far enough, tell the assistant to update the saved rules, and the next draft comes back closer.
Run the setup prompt again every few months. The skill only knows the habits it was built from, and the catalogue will have moved on.
Time and effort
Half an hour with your assistant to get it saved and tested on a couple of real drafts. After that it is a minute per draft.
