slop-guard 0.2.0

Rule-based prose linter for formulaic AI writing patterns.

slop-guard

A rule-based prose linter that scores text 0--100 for formulaic AI writing patterns. No LLM judge, no API calls. Purely programmatic.

It runs ~80 compiled patterns against your text and returns a numeric score, a list of specific violations with surrounding context, and concrete advice for each hit.

Add to Your Agent

Claude Code

Add from the command line:

claude mcp add slop-guard -- uvx slop-guard

Add to your .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "slop-guard": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["slop-guard"]
    }
  }
}

Codex

Add from the command line:

codex mcp add slop-guard -- uvx slop-guard

Add to your ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.slop-guard]
command = "uvx"
args = ["slop-guard"]

If you want a fixed release, pin it in args, for example: ["slop-guard==0.2.0"].

CLI

The sg command lints prose files from the terminal. No API keys, no network calls.

Quick start

# Run without installing
uvx --from slop-guard sg README.md

# Or install it
uv tool install slop-guard
sg README.md

Usage

sg [OPTIONS] INPUT [INPUT ...]

sg requires at least one input. Each input can be a file path, - for stdin, or quoted inline prose text:

sg "This is some test text"
echo "This is a crucial paradigm shift." | sg -

Lint multiple files at once (shell-level glob expansion):

sg docs/*.md README.md
sg path/**/*.md

Options

Flag	Description
-j, --json	Output results as JSON
-v, --verbose	Show individual violations and advice
-q, --quiet	Only print sources that fail the threshold
-t SCORE, --threshold SCORE	Minimum passing score (0-100). Exit 1 if any file scores below this
-c, --concise	Print only numeric score output
--counts	Show per-rule hit counts in the summary line

Examples

# One-line summary per file
sg draft.md
# => draft.md: 72/100 [light] (1843 words) *

# Concise output (score only)
sg -c draft.md

# Verbose output with violations and advice
sg -v draft.md

# JSON for scripting
sg -j report.md | jq '.score'

# CI gate: fail if any file scores below 60
sg -t 60 docs/*.md

# Quiet mode: only show failures
sg -q -t 60 **/*.md

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success (all files pass threshold, or no threshold set)
1	One or more files scored below the threshold
2	Error (bad file path, read failure, etc.)

Installation

Requires uv.

Run without installing (recommended for MCP setups):

uvx slop-guard

Install persistently (gives you both slop-guard MCP server and sg CLI):

uv tool install slop-guard

Pin versions for reproducibility:

uvx slop-guard==0.2.0

Upgrade an installed tool:

uv tool upgrade slop-guard

From source

From a local checkout:

uv run slop-guard   # MCP server
uv run sg            # CLI linter

MCP Tools

check_slop(text) -- Analyze a string. Returns JSON.

check_slop_file(file_path) -- Read a file from disk and analyze it. Same output, plus a file field.

What it catches

The linter checks for overused vocabulary (adjectives, verbs, nouns, hedging adverbs), stock phrases and filler, structural patterns (bold-header-explanation blocks, long bullet runs, triadic lists, bold-term bullet runs, bullet-heavy formatting), tone markers (meta-communication, false narrativity, sentence-opener tells, weasel phrases, AI self-disclosure), rhythm monotony (uniform sentence length), em dash and elaboration colon density, contrast pairs, setup-resolution patterns, and repeated multi-word phrases (4-8 word n-grams appearing 3+ times).

Scoring uses exponential decay: score = 100 * exp(-lambda * density), where density is the weighted penalty sum normalized per 1000 words. Claude-specific categories (contrast pairs, setup-resolution, pithy fragments) get a concentration multiplier. Repeated use of the same tic costs more than diverse violations.

Scoring bands

Score	Band
80-100	Clean
60-79	Light
40-59	Moderate
20-39	Heavy
0-19	Saturated

Output

Both tools return JSON with this structure:

score          0-100 integer
band           "clean" / "light" / "moderate" / "heavy" / "saturated"
word_count     integer
violations     array of {type, rule, match, context, penalty}
counts         per-category violation counts
total_penalty  sum of all penalty values
weighted_sum   after concentration multiplier
density        weighted_sum per 1000 words
advice         array of actionable strings, one per distinct issue

violations[].type is always "Violation" for typed records.

Benchmark snapshot

Example score distribution from benchmark/us_pd_newspapers_histogram.py on PleIAs/US-PD-Newspapers (first 9,001 rows of one local shard):

Example score-vs-length scatter plot from benchmark/us_pd_newspapers_scatter.py on the same shard:

Example per-rule compute-time curves from benchmark/compute-time.py + benchmark/chart.py (annotated with the slowest rules at max length):

License

MIT