THE HUMANIZER

AI text gets caught because it keeps making the same moves. The same punctuation, the same sentence shapes, the same fifteen words nobody used this much before 2023. Wikipedia's editors delete that slop every day, and they wrote down every pattern they look for on one public page. This playbook turns their list into a one line prompt, then into a permanent skill, so everything you write with AI stops reading like AI.

WHY IT WORKS

Wikipedia has a page called "Signs of AI writing." It is maintained by WikiProject AI Cleanup, the volunteer editors who hunt machine written text out of the encyclopedia. Every tell on it is there because it kept showing up in articles they had to fix. When models pick up new habits, the editors add them. It is the most complete public field guide to AI writing, kept current by the people best at spotting it.

That matters because "sound more human" is a useless instruction. The model has no idea what you mean, so it guesses, and the guess sounds like AI trying to sound human. A named blacklist is different. Models are good at avoiding specifics. Give the model the exact list its own output gets caught against and it stops guessing what human sounds like. It just stops doing the things on the list.

You are not teaching it to write better. You are handing it the answer key to the test everyone grades it with.

THE PROMPT

Paste this at the start of a session, before any writing request:

Look up all the signs of AI writing on Wikipedia, and make sure you never use any of them again going forward.

That is the whole trick. Any model with web access will find the page, read the list, and hold it for the rest of the conversation.

If you want to remove the guesswork, use the precise version. It names the exact page and closes the loopholes:

Fetch the Wikipedia page "Wikipedia:Signs of AI writing" and read the full list. For the rest of this conversation, never use any pattern it describes: the vocabulary, the punctuation habits, the sentence structures, and the formatting. Apply this to everything you write for me. If you catch one in your draft, rewrite it before you answer.

Run it once, then write like normal. The difference shows up in the first paragraph.

KNOW THE TELLS

The page is long. These are the ones I see most, so you can grade text yourself before anyone else does.

• Em dashes doing every job. The single loudest tell. One per page is a choice, five per paragraph is a model.
• The rule of three. "Fast, simple, and powerful." AI reaches for triplets constantly because they sound complete.
• "It's not just X, it's Y." And its cousins: "isn't merely," "goes beyond." Empty contrast dressed as insight.
• Significance inflation. "Stands as a testament," "plays a vital role," "underscores its importance." Nothing earns these, they just appear.
• Puffery words. Vibrant, breathtaking, nestled, rich cultural heritage. Travel brochure filler.
• Vague authority. "Industry reports suggest," "experts note." Cited to no one.
• The word list. Delve, tapestry, landscape, pivotal, crucial, boasts, fosters, showcases, seamless. Each one raises the odds.
• Wrap up crutches. "In conclusion," "Overall," and chains of moreover, furthermore, additionally.
• Formatting tells. Bold on random phrases, emoji in headings, title case everywhere, bullet lists where prose belongs.

None of these prove AI wrote something. Three of them in one paragraph is a different story.

MAKE IT A SKILL

The prompt dies with the session. A skill survives. Claude Code ships with a skill builder called skill-creator, so you can turn the prompt into a permanent tool in about two minutes.

1. Open Claude Code in any project.
2. Ask for the skill. Type: use skill-creator to make a skill called humanizer. When it runs, fetch the Wikipedia page "Wikipedia:Signs of AI writing" and treat every pattern it lists as banned in your output. It should trigger whenever I ask you to write, rewrite, or edit anything.
3. Let it build. skill-creator writes the skill to your skills folder, name, trigger description, and instructions included.
4. Test it. Start a fresh session and ask for a paragraph on anything. Watch what does not show up.

The trigger description in step two is the important part. It tells Claude to load the skill on every writing task automatically, not just when you name it.

RUN IT FIRST

Once the skill exists, put it in front of everything.

• Name it when it matters. "Use the humanizer skill, then write my newsletter intro." Naming it guarantees it loads.
• Let it auto fire. If the trigger description covers writing tasks, it loads on its own. Spot check the first few outputs to confirm.
• No Claude Code? The prompt works anywhere with web access. Paste it at the top of a ChatGPT or Gemini chat, or drop it into a Claude project's custom instructions so every chat in the project starts armed.
• Watch for drift. Long sessions bury instructions. If the tells creep back after fifty messages, restate the prompt or start clean. A canary will tell you the moment it slips.

Tonight's version: paste the one line prompt into your next session and rewrite the last thing you published. Read both out loud. You will hear it. For more build with AI playbooks, follow opusjake.ai.