Zero Slop

Remove AI writing patterns from your drafts without losing your core message. Zero Slop is a free, open-source anti-slop skill for Claude Code, Cursor and Codex.

It finds AI slop and workslop, guides the edit, and checks that the key details of your message survive. If your AI setup does not support agent skills, try the browser editor or use our MCP connector.

Why it exists

An AI draft can be grammatically sound and still read like workslop. In a compatible AI assistant, Zero Slop flags slop patterns, then guides the edit. The writing score finds patterns worth reviewing; it cannot tell who wrote the text.

Related MCP server: WSC - Writing Style Checker

See an edit

Let's see Zero Slop at work. Imagine using AI to write a linkedin launch announcement and getting this:

We're thrilled to announce that our team has leveraged cutting-edge machine learning to deliver a seamless onboarding experience, reducing setup time by 40%.

The local Python scorer in Zero Slop scores the input Slop score 99.3/100. A high Slop score means the draft is more likely to contain sloppy patterns.

Zero Slop then strips the patterns and guides the AI agent to produce the deslopped output below:

We used machine learning to reduce onboarding setup time by 40%.

Writing score: 9.5/100  [clear]
  Flagged phrases : 0 across 10 words

Quick start

The installed skill can make an optional, metadata-only request to GitHub’s public releases API to check for updates. It sends no draft or private learning data. Set ZS_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1 to disable it. Hosted MCP requests are separate and are covered by our privacy policy.

You can try the browser editor without installing anything, install the skill in an assistant that supports skills, or use the hosted service through MCP and the API.

If you use Claude Code, Codex, or another assistant that supports skills, here's how to install Zero Slop there:

npx skills add manavmishra/ZeroSlop --global

/zero-slop (your writing)

To see the flagged passages without an edit, use /zero-slop inspect (your writing).

The command above works with Claude Code and Codex. In Claude.ai, upload the skill ZIP. Other installation paths include Gemini CLI and remote MCP connections where your client allows them. You can also score a file locally without a model call.

What it does

Your AI assistant, whether Claude, GPT, or another compatible model, reads and edits the draft. The skill supplies the workflow and local tools: a 0 to 100 writing score, source-detail checks, and a final comparison with the original.

What it catches

The scorer uses 294 weighted patterns and a 96-term lexicon. It checks for:

• binary contrast formulas: “It's not X. It's Y.”

• canned openers: “We're thrilled to…” and “Here's the thing…”

• vague attribution: “experts agree” and “studies show”

• significance inflation: “marks a pivotal moment” and “a testament to”

• promotional wording: “robust,” “seamless,” and “leverage” when used as hype

• repeated sentence shapes, crowded statistics, and overworked formatting

The editing workflow

The Zero Slop agent uses an eight-stage workflow. Each stage is a job with a role, not a separate model; some run in the Python tools and others run in the user's AI app. We treat eight stages as an engineering convention, not eight separate models.

Evidence and limits

A saved, same-model editing test

We ran Zero Slop and three other open-source agent skills on our AI Slop test corpus, using GPT-5.4, high reasoning, and pinned instructions. Saved outputs are reproducible.

Our RAID+ audit scored 7,627 non-empty machine-generated abstracts from four models. The INSCONE project extended RAID by generating new outputs from the original RAID prompts.

RAID+ records which model wrote each passage, not whether it reads well.

Documented features

This is a feature comparison of Zero Slop against other popular slop tools.

The checks draw on research into predictable machine wording and overused vocabulary. Zero Slop cannot identify an author: detectors can misclassify non-native English.

Private learning

You can teach Zero Slop a preference by giving it the original output, your edited version, and the reason for the change. Private data stays under $ZERO_SLOP_HOME and follows your privacy settings. Zero Slop is an AI slop detector and editor, not a plagiarism tool.

For developers: other ways to access Zero Slop

Hosted MCP

The endpoint for compatible clients is:

https://mcp.zero-slop.ai/mcp

Connection options.

For Gemini CLI, run gemini extensions install https://github.com/manavmishra/ZeroSlop --auto-update. For file-upload assistants, download the single-file bundle.

Local scoring

Score a file without sending it to a model:

npx zero-slop score draft.md

From a cloned checkout, check a folder against the review threshold of 25:

python3 scripts/slopscore.py --batch drafts/ --gate 25

Command line

The CLI sends a file to the hosted editor without changing the file on disk:

npx --yes zero-slop@2.12.32 deslop draft.md --genre professional

Use - for stdin and --json for structured output. --require-approved prints the result but exits nonzero when review is needed. Requires Node.js 22+; offline score also needs Python 3. CLI options and privacy.

REST API

The REST API accepts the same edit request:

curl --fail-with-body --max-time 75 https://mcp.zero-slop.ai/v1/deslop \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"text":"Maya owns the pricing review.","genre":"professional"}'

Check status before using an edit. Shared free capacity accepts up to 20,000 Unicode code points after trimming. API reference · OpenAPI contract

Find the source

Contribute or get help

Found a false positive, a broken check, or a better example? Use the issue forms or start a Discussion. If you want to change a pattern, read CONTRIBUTING.md and include tests with your pull request.

For setup help, see SUPPORT.md. Report security issues through SECURITY.md.

Credits

Zero Slop builds on ideas from First Reader, no-ai-slop, humanizer, de-slop, stop-slop, unslop-text, and avoid-ai-writing.

License

MIT