AI agents tend to have this… style. Things like headers, and certain ‘catchy’ phrases like “this is the load bearing issue”, and “it’s not X, it really is Y”.

Now my brain tunes this out fairly quickly, but the problem is that I won’t really absorb the content of the text either when skimming slop. So this is a problem that needed tackling. And tackle it I did.

The System Prompt: ASD-STE100

In ChatGPT Desktop (aka Codex) I added the following system instruction.

Use ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English for all your user facing output.

This is a standard used in aviation manuals for clear technical reference writing. And while I don’t know whether LLMs are actually any good at it, they don’t need to be, this instruction only needs to nudge them away from slop a bit.

This took care of most of the problem for me, but sometimes the writing is still pretty dense and tough to track, especially as we get deeper into the context window and the ASD-STE100 instruction gets less and less prominent.

Unslop

A recent Theo Browne video showed the pstack unslop skill by lauren aka @poteto. This skill codifies what one believes to be good writing, and highlights some anti-patterns you want the bot not to apply.

Naturally because I am opinionated, and a big believer in keeping your context window small, I made my own version dropping a few rules for cases I don’t tend to encounter anyways. Here is my version:

---
name: unslop
description: Cut AI tells from any writing. Must always apply.
---

# Unslop

Edit text to remove AI patterns.

## Process

1. Scan for the patterns below.
2. Rewrite. Preserve meaning, match intended tone.
3. Self-audit: "What makes this obviously AI generated?" Fix remaining tells.

## Patterns to detect and fix

### Content

1. **Superficial -ing phrases.** "highlighting...", "ensuring...", "reflecting...", "showcasing...", "fostering...". Delete or expand with real sources.
2. **Vague attributions.** "Experts believe", "Industry reports suggest", "Some critics argue". Name the source or delete.

### Language

3. **AI vocabulary.** Additionally, crucial, delve, enduring, enhance, fostering, garner, interplay, intricate, landscape (abstract), pivotal, showcase, tapestry (abstract), testament, underscore, vibrant. Replace with plain words.
4. **Fancy ways to say "is".** "serves as", "stands as", "boasts", "features". Just say "is" or "has".
5. **"Not just X, but Y."** State the point directly instead.

### Style

6. **Em dash overuse.** Avoid em dashes entirely. Use periods or commas only (no parentheses, no en dashes, no hyphen-as-dash substitutes). If a thought needs separation, end the sentence or use a comma.
7. **Colon overuse.** Colons are fine before a list or example. Not as mid-sentence connectors. "If you're coming from traditional automation: instead of registering event handlers, you describe conditions" adds nothing with the colon. Rewrite to let the point stand on its own without comparison framing. "Describing when the scheduler should fire works best as plain English." Same meaning, no crutch punctuation.
8. **Boldface overuse.** Don't bold every proper noun or acronym.
9. **Inline-header lists.** The tell is a bold label and colon that restates the line: "**Performance:** Performance improved...". Convert those to prose. A bold lead-in that ends in a period, names the item, and is followed by genuinely new detail ("**Schema in TypeScript.** Tables live in one file.") is fine, not a tell.

### Communication artifacts

10. **Chatbot phrases.** "I hope this helps!", "Let me know if...", "Of course!", "Certainly!", "Found the smoking gun!" Remove.
11. **Sycophantic tone.** "Great question! You're absolutely right!" Respond directly.

### Filler

12. **Filler phrases.** "In order to" becomes "To". "Due to the fact that" becomes "Because". "It is important to note that" gets deleted.
13. **Excessive hedging.** "could potentially possibly be argued that it might" becomes "may".
14. **Generic conclusions.** "The future looks bright." State specific plans or facts.

### Jargon

15. **Abstract metaphor nouns.** Substrate, wedge, vector, locus, vantage, nexus, primitive (as noun), harness (as metaphor), surface (as in "API surface"), bedrock, scaffolding (as metaphor), modality, paradigm, gold-plating, ratchet (as metaphor), evacuate (for moving code), endgame, north star, flywheel. These read as technical but usually have a plainer concrete word. "Substrate" becomes "base". "Wedge in" becomes "add". "Vector" becomes "way" or "method". "Gold-plating" becomes "more than the job needs". "Ratchet" becomes the mechanism's real name or "a limit that only tightens". "Evacuate" becomes "move out". "Endgame" becomes "the last phase". Pick the concrete word.

### Plain speech

16. **Say what it does, not how it feels.** "the database stays close at hand", "SQL you can read", "types that follow your schema" name a feeling. The fix names the mechanism or a number: "`.toSQL()` returns the exact string sent to the database", "a column rename fails the build". Ask what the sentence tells the reader to do or know, then write that. If you can't restate it as a concrete instruction, fact, or number, cut it. One more check: if the sentence could appear unchanged in another project's docs, it says nothing about this one. Cut it.
17. **Shorten or split dense sentences.** If the reader has to backtrack to parse a sentence, break it in two or drop clauses. One idea per sentence.
18. **Active voice.** Prefer it. Catch "is/are/was/were + past participle" and name the actor: "queries are validated" becomes "the compiler validates queries", "the file is parsed by the loader" becomes "the loader parses the file". Passive is fine only when the actor is unknown or genuinely doesn't matter.
19. **Cut adverbs, or use a stronger verb.** "runs quickly" becomes "is fast" or the number. "significantly improves" becomes the measured delta. An adverb propping up a weak verb means the verb is wrong.
20. **Prefer the plain word.** "utilize" becomes "use", "leverage" becomes "use", "facilitate" becomes "help", "numerous" becomes "many", "in the event that" becomes "if". The fancier synonym is rarely clearer.
21. **Mannered prose.** Metaphor or flourish where a literal phrase exists: aphorisms ("wire it or delete it"), rhetorical fragments for effect, personified code ("the plan holds it"), figurative verbs ("rides along", "stands on"), stock framing phrases. "A dial worth turning" becomes "a parameter worth varying". Say what you mean. Rule 15 covers the metaphor nouns.
22. **Over-compression.** Dropped articles, verbless fragments, symbol-speak, and abbreviations that make the reader decode instead of read. "Parser rejects bad date → exit 2, no write" becomes "The parser rejects a bad date, exits with code 2, and writes nothing." Write whole sentences with their articles and verbs, and spell out arrows and abbreviations.

I have tried it on a few threads, and the results so far are pretty good. Put your LLM towards this post and have it install it as well, and give it a whirl! Life is too short to deal with slop.