AI tells
How much of this site's copy carries the habits of machine-written prose — measured over the same corpus as Voice & tone, against a catalogue of165 patterns in two tiers plus 6 sentence shapes.
How to read this
This is not a detector and a hit is not evidence.
It cannot tell you who or what wrote something, and it never will. Every pattern below appears in prose written by people — several are ordinary English that any writer uses. A number here is a prompt to look at a sentence, never a verdict on it, and using one to accuse a writer would be a misuse of the page.
What is actually measurable is rate and position. One "plays a crucial role" in two thousand words is a sentence. Three in one section is a register, and the register is the tell. A phrase in a headline lands harder than the same phrase in a paragraph, because more people read it.
The three measures are not the same kind of rule, and treating them alike is what makes an AI-tells check useless. Distinctive phrases are close to a ban — almost nobody writes "here's the kicker" on purpose. Overused ordinary English is a budget: chasing it to zero produces stilted avoidance, which is its own tell. Sentence shapes are habits, and a habit is only a problem at volume.
Summary
89,848 words scanned — prose and display copy together, across every markdown file, section default and page template on the site.
Distinctive phrases
436uses
Above targettarget 0 or fewer
20 of 110 catalogued phrases appear. Each one has a repair that costs the sentence nothing.
Close to a ban, not a budget. These are constructions with a repair that loses nothing — the sentence works without them.
How this is measured
Counts: Phrases almost nobody writes on purpose — "here’s the kicker", "unlock the power of", "in today’s fast-paced world".
Computed: Each of the catalogue’s ban-tier patterns matched case-insensitively across prose and display copy. Counted flat: one hit is a hit, and the table shows what it matched so the reader can judge it rather than take the count on trust.
Limits: A hit is not evidence of anything. People write these too, and a handful across a whole site is a handful. The examples are shown for exactly this reason.
Words per overused phrase
4992words
Within targettarget 400 or more
18 uses across 89,848 words, 10 of them in headings or captions.
A density budget from the catalogue: at most one per 400 words. Above the budget is fine; below it means the register is thickening.
How this is measured
Counts: Phrases that are normal English but 22x-182x commoner in machine-written text.
Computed: A density budget, not a ban: at most one hit per 400 words. Reported as words-per-hit against that budget. Position matters too — the catalogue counts a hit in a headline, an H1 or a CTA as over budget regardless of document length, so display-copy hits are counted separately.
Limits: Chasing these to zero is the wrong outcome. Every one is a sentence a human writes sometimes, and a writer avoiding them all produces stilted prose, which is its own tell. Over budget means look, not delete.
Shapes over budget
5of 6
Above targettarget 0 or fewer
Over budget: "Not just X, it's Y", Three-item lists, Empty lead-ins, Stacked hedging, Em-dash density.
Each shape carries its own rate budget, listed below with what it matched. A shape over budget is a habit worth breaking, not a fault.
How this is measured
Counts: Constructions rather than phrases: "not just X, it’s Y", rule-of-three cadence, stacked hedging, em-dash density, conjunctive-adverb openers, empty lead-ins.
Computed: Each shape matched by its own pattern over the prose, reported per 10,000 words against a budget. Shapes are measured because they survive paraphrase: a writer told to stop saying "not just X, it’s Y" writes "this isn’t merely X — it is Y", which a phrase list misses and the shape catches.
Limits: The rule-of-three pattern is narrowed to three lowercase single words closing a sentence, because matching every "X, Y and Z" caught ordinary lists of services. It undercounts on purpose — for a number that gets read as an accusation, that is the right direction to be wrong in.
In display copy
137uses
Above targettarget 0 or fewer
Hits that landed in a heading, tagline, caption or button label rather than in a paragraph.
The catalogue counts a hit in a headline, an H1 or a CTA as over budget regardless of document length. Position is part of the measure, not a refinement of it.
How this is measured
Counts: Hits from either tier that landed in a heading, tagline, caption or button label rather than in a paragraph.
Computed: Every match is attributed to the field it came from as it is found, and display-copy matches are totalled across both tiers. Position is part of the measure rather than a refinement of it: the catalogue counts a hit in a headline, an H1 or a CTA as over budget regardless of how long the document is.
Limits: It counts where a phrase sits, not how prominent that position actually is on the rendered page. A caption on the twelfth image and an H1 both count as display copy.
Distinctive phrases
The tier closest to a ban. These are constructions almost nobody writes deliberately, and every one has a repair that costs the sentence nothing — which is the test for belonging in this tier at all.
| Matched | Uses | Files | Cluster | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Deep dive, Holistic, holistic, game changer, Deep Dive, paradigm37 in display copy | 175 | 115 | Empty corporate verbs and superlatives | Cut or replace with plain description |
revolutionizes, transformed, disruption, transform, transforms, Transform43 in display copy | 105 | 57 | Hype verbs and number framing | Cut or quantify ("doubled MQLs in 90 days") |
elevated, Empowered, empowered, elevating, unlock, Empowering25 in display copy | 76 | 50 | Empty corporate verbs and superlatives | Use literal verb: "use", "wire up", "save", "let X do Y" |
amazing, extraordinary, incredible, transformative, Amazing, Transformative12 in display copy | 42 | 27 | Empty corporate verbs and superlatives | Cut, or replace with a specific claim |
groundbreaking, revolutionary, pioneering2 in display copy | 7 | 5 | Empty corporate verbs and superlatives | Cut or cite the evidence |
why it matters, why that matters1 in display copy | 5 | 4 | Filler transitions and preambles | Cut the label. Lead with the fact ("There's no database and no plugins, so there's very little to attack") |
dominated, conquered, dominating1 in display copy | 4 | 3 | Hype verbs and number framing | State the actual outcome with numbers |
cutting-edge, cutting edge | 3 | 3 | Empty corporate verbs and superlatives | Cut, or replace with a specific quantified claim |
Are You Ready To | 3 | 3 | CTA and closer clichés | Cut or name the action |
most people realize, most people don't2 in display copy | 3 | 2 | False-insider framing (the "secret knowledge" move) | Cut. If you must, name what the masses do instead with specifics ("HubSpot priced out at $800/mo") |
underrated | 2 | 2 | Hype-tease labels | Cut, lead with the specific claim |
real results2 in display copy | 2 | 2 | Vague mass-noun results | Cite the actual result ("3× pipeline in 90 days") |
level up, Level Up1 in display copy | 2 | 1 | Hype verbs and number framing | Cut or describe the actual upgrade |
game changer | 1 | 1 | Hype-tease labels | Cut or quantify the actual change |
let's get started | 1 | 1 | Filler transitions and preambles | Cut and just start |
Let me explain | 1 | 1 | Filler transitions and preambles | Cut |
Keep Reading1 in display copy | 1 | 1 | Authoritative-guide setups and listicle filler | Cut |
let's get started | 1 | 1 | Authoritative-guide setups and listicle filler | Cut and start |
unlock your potential | 1 | 1 | CTA and closer clichés | Cut |
at the end of the day | 1 | 1 | Stock phrases | Cut |
20 of 110 patterns in this tier matched; 90 matched nothing.
Overused ordinary English
A budget, not a ban. Every phrase in this tier is grammatical English a person writes sometimes — "parents play a significant role in shaping their children's values" is a normal sentence. What marks copy as machine-written is the rate: each of these is between 22 and 182 times commoner in AI text than in human text, so three in a short section is a register even though one is nothing.
Budget: at most one per 400 words, none in a headline or a first paragraph, never two in one paragraph. Over budget, cut the weakest hits — the ones carrying no fact — and keep any doing real work. Cutting all of them is the wrong outcome.
| Matched | Uses | Files | Cluster | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|---|
A holistic approach, A Holistic Approach, a holistic approach5 in display copy | 7 | 5 | Complexity and navigation register | List the parts |
the transformative power of, The Transformative Power of3 in display copy | 5 | 3 | Monument register — legacy, marks, turning points | Say what it changed |
sheds light on1 in display copy | 2 | 1 | Depth and nuance claims | State what it found |
a unique perspective1 in display copy | 2 | 1 | Hedged abstraction | Name the components / the view / the opening |
highlights the importance | 1 | 1 | Significance inflation | State the finding; let the reader judge importance |
a deeper understanding | 1 | 1 | Depth and nuance claims | Name what is understood |
6 of 55 patterns in this tier matched; 49 matched nothing.
Sentence shapes
Not phrases — constructions. These matter more than any word list because they survive paraphrase: a writer told to stop saying "it's not just X, it's Y" writes "this isn't merely X — it is Y", which a phrase list misses and the shape catches.
| Shape | Uses | Per 10k | Budget | Found |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Not just X, it's Y"Over budgetA negated setup followed by the real claim. The most recognisable single construction in machine-written marketing copy.Repair: Delete the setup and keep the claim. The reader did not need to be told what it is not. | 3 | 0.4 | 0 | it’s not just about living longer… What if it’snot just muscle butnot just <b>what ATG is</b>, but |
| Three-item listsOver budgetThree single words closing a sentence — "fast, cheap, and honest". Ordinary lists count too, because no pattern can tell a rhetorical triad from a real list of three things. One is nothing; a page of them is a template.Repair: Keep the best two, or replace all three with the one specific thing they were circling. | 44 | 5.8 | 8 | protein, fats and carbohydrates.consistency, patience and compassion.mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?sleep, move, and heal. |
| Conjunctive-adverb openersSentences opening Furthermore, Moreover, Ultimately. Essay register borrowed into brand copy.Repair: Cut the adverb. The connection is almost always already clear from the order of the sentences. | 0 | 0 | 10 | — |
| Empty lead-insOver budget"In today's fast-paced world", "when it comes to", "it's important to note that" — throat-clearing before the sentence starts.Repair: Delete it. Every one of these can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence. | 9 | 1.2 | 0 | at the end of the daywhen it comes toin the world of |
| Stacked hedgingOver budgetTwo or more hedges in one sentence. Each softens the claim, and together they leave nothing a reader can hold you to.Repair: Keep one hedge at most. If the claim needs two, it is not a claim yet. | 11 | 1.5 | 5 | Some people are eating too much in one sitting and could benefit from Overtime this emotion begins to congeal in your body and you may end uThis is why going from “mostly sedentary” to “full throttle running” o |
| Em-dash densityOver budgetEm dashes per 10,000 words. A real punctuation mark, and a documented habit of generated prose when it appears in every second sentence.Repair: Alternate. A comma, a full stop, or a pair of brackets does the same job and the page stops looking uniform. | 166 | 21.9 | 120 | — |
Budgets are per 10,000 words and are house style, not findings. Read a shape over budget next to what it actually matched: if the examples are ordinary lists rather than rhetoric, the pattern is being generous and the number is not telling you anything.
Method
The catalogue is a curated pattern bank, grown by hand as somebody notices a new tell. It is not a trained classifier, and the full methodology — what each measure counts, how it is computed, its source and its known limits — is on Voice & tone with every other measure, so there is one place to argue with the method rather than two.
Patterns, not a word list. "Delve" is a real word, and banning vocabulary makes writers write around it — which reads worse than the word did, and is its own tell. Every entry matches a construction. The catalogue lives in src/lib/ai-tells-catalog.ts, the shapes in src/lib/ai-tells.ts, and both are meant to be edited: a pattern that keeps producing false positives on this site's copy should be narrowed or removed rather than explained away every time somebody reads the page.