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How to Build a Human-Style Writing Skill from Wikipedia’s AI Guide

By Freedom251 Team · · 9 min read

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Wikipedia’s “Signs of AI writing” guide can become a useful agent skill, but only if you use it as a review-and-revision framework rather than an authorship detector. The skill should look for clusters of stylistic signals, identify the missing fact or source beneath each signal, rewrite for specificity while preserving the writer’s voice, and hand uncertain cases to a person. Individual words, em dashes, or three-part lists are not proof that a passage came from a language model.

This approach turns a descriptive community field guide into a repeatable editorial workflow. It also avoids a fundamental limitation documented by OpenAI: ChatGPT cannot reliably determine whether it generated a passage, and detector-style answers can be baseless. The result should be a transparent editing assistant, not a machine that declares who wrote something.

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What is Wikipedia’s AI-writing guide?

English Wikipedia describes “Signs of AI writing” as a community-maintained resource listing conventions often found in large-language-model text. The page was created in 2023 and received significant media coverage in 2025. Its examples include structural habits such as giving a subject undue emphasis, repeatedly arranging ideas in groups of three, and using negative parallelism.

The guide is descriptive, not a style policy. It does not ban a particular word, punctuation mark, or paragraph shape. A human writer can naturally use an em dash, a three-item list, or a sentence about importance. The useful question is whether several signals appear together and whether the prose lacks the evidence, attribution, or concrete explanation a reader needs.

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That distinction should appear near the beginning of the skill’s instructions. Otherwise an agent may turn a nuanced field guide into a brittle blacklist that damages legitimate writing.

Why should the skill revise prose instead of trying to detect its author?

A detector can flag a surface pattern; it cannot establish authorship. OpenAI’s Help Center states that “ChatGPT has no ‘knowledge’ of what content could be AI-generated or what it generated.” A score or label therefore should never be presented as proof that a person used an AI system.

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Revision addresses a problem the editor can actually observe: the passage may sound generic because it makes an unsupported significance claim, hides the subject behind vague relationship language, or omits the source of a quotation. Fixing that weakness improves the article regardless of who drafted it.

Use the skill to produce two separate reports:

  • Possible style signals: clusters that resemble patterns in the guide, described with cautious confidence.
  • Factual or sourcing issues: missing names, unverifiable claims, unclear referents, and statements that need evidence.

Keeping those reports separate prevents a stylistic observation from being mistaken for an authorship accusation.

How does the four-stage review loop work?

A dependable skill follows four stages in order: scan, diagnose, rewrite, and review. Each stage has a different job, so the agent should not jump directly from a flagged word to a replacement.

1. Scan for clusters, not forbidden words

The scan marks possible signals and records their locations. It should look for combinations such as hollow claims about importance alongside promotional adjectives, or repeated rule-of-three lists alongside excessive headings. One occurrence is normally weak evidence; repeated patterns across a passage deserve closer inspection.

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Useful scan categories include:

  • Empty significance language: claims that something is “a testament,” “a pivotal moment,” or broadly important without explaining what changed or for whom.
  • Promotional puffery: celebratory adjectives that sound like marketing rather than reporting.
  • Vague relationship phrases: wording such as “plays a crucial role in shaping” when a direct verb and a named subject would be clearer.
  • Overused AI-associated vocabulary: recurring abstract words that add tone but no information.
  • Rule-of-three constructions: a repeated rhythm of three adjectives, clauses, or examples when the list has no deliberate rhetorical purpose.
  • Negative parallelism: repeated “not only … but also …” or similar contrasts that make every sentence follow the same template.
  • Canned attribution: formulaic phrases that introduce a source without identifying the person, document, date, or organization.
  • Excessive sectioning: many short headings that fragment a simple idea.
  • Punctuation habits: unusually frequent em dashes or other marks used in the same syntactic position.

The scan should retain the original text and line or paragraph references. An editor needs to see what was flagged and why, not just a final “human” rewrite.

2. Diagnose the missing substance

For every cluster, ask what the reader is missing. Is there a specific fact, a named source, a clear subject, a concrete verb, or a meaningful comparison? This diagnostic step is the difference between editing and synonym replacement.

For example, “The launch was a pivotal moment for the industry” may be weak because it does not say which launch, which industry, or what measurable change followed. The remedy could be a date, a product capability, a market consequence, and a source—not a replacement for “pivotal.” If the writer cannot supply those details, the skill should recommend deleting or qualifying the claim.

3. Rewrite at the cause level

The rewrite should preserve the author’s intent, point of view, and appropriate level of certainty. It can shorten padding, vary sentence structure, and replace abstract verbs, but it must not invent facts or citations.

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A safe rewrite sequence is:

  1. State the subject explicitly.
  2. Replace a generic verb with the action that actually occurred.
  3. Add a concrete detail only when it appears in the supplied material or a source the writer has named.
  4. Attribute claims to a person, organization, document, or date when attribution matters.
  5. Keep a cautious qualifier when the evidence is incomplete.
  6. Show the original and revised wording so the author can accept, reject, or edit the change.

The softaworks implementation describes this as fixing the underlying cause rather than performing word substitution. That principle should be a hard requirement in the skill prompt.

4. Review with a person

The agent returns proposed edits, unresolved questions, and confidence language such as “possible style signal” or “source needed.” A human then checks whether a pattern is intentional, whether a factual detail is accurate, and whether the revision still sounds like the author.

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When the agent cannot decide, it should ask a focused question: “Which event makes this a turning point?” is useful; “Please add more detail” is not. The review record should preserve rejected suggestions as well as accepted ones when the workflow is used for consequential publishing.

Which writing signals are worth scanning?

The guide’s patterns are most useful when treated as prompts for editorial questions. The following categories provide a practical scan without turning the skill into a banned-word list.

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Significance and symbolism claims

Look for sentences that announce broad importance, symbolism, or legacy without evidence. Ask what happened, when, and what consequence supports the claim. If the sentence is merely framing a section, a factual lead may work better than a grand conclusion.

Promotional language

Words such as “groundbreaking,” “remarkable,” or “seamless” can be valid in a quoted statement or a clearly identified review. They become a problem when the narrator uses them without a standard of comparison. The skill should request the basis for the praise or remove it.

Vague relationships and abstract verbs

“Serves as a testament to,” “plays a role in shaping,” and similar phrases often conceal the actor and action. The agent should identify the actual relationship: funds, measures, causes, follows, replaces, or is cited by.

Repetitive rhetorical shapes

Three-part lists and negative parallelism are ordinary human techniques. Flag them when they recur mechanically or when the third item is filler. The rewrite may combine items, change the order, or explain why the grouping matters.

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Attribution without a source

“Experts say” and “critics have noted” are not useful attribution unless the writer names the experts or critics. The skill should request a name and source, convert the statement into a clearly marked general observation, or remove it.

Over-structured presentation

Headings help readers navigate a long guide, but a heading for every sentence makes the piece feel generated and slows reading. The agent should propose merging sections only when the resulting hierarchy remains clear.

Punctuation and formatting habits

An em dash is not an AI tell. The guide itself recognizes that surface signs can change as models adapt. The skill may report unusual frequency or repetitive placement, but it should never “correct” punctuation solely because a model often uses it.

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How can the skill preserve an author’s voice?

Voice preservation requires constraints before rewriting begins. Ask the author or editor to specify audience, formality, point of view, regional spelling, preferred terminology, and whether first-person language is intentional. The agent should treat those choices as fixed unless the reviewer approves a change.

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Give each proposed edit a reason tied to the diagnosis, such as “names the source,” “removes unsupported praise,” or “clarifies the subject.” Do not label an edit “more human” without explaining the observable improvement. A useful output contains four parts:

  • The original sentence or paragraph.
  • The signal or factual issue detected.
  • The proposed revision.
  • A note describing what information would resolve any uncertainty.

Voice is also preserved by refusing to flatten deliberate style. A memoir may use repetition for emphasis; a technical manual may use parallel lists for fast scanning. Genre context determines whether a pattern is a flaw.

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What should an agent skill’s instructions contain?

A platform-neutral skill can be specified as a small contract rather than a blacklist. Define the trigger, the inputs, the analysis sequence, and the output format before adding examples.

Inputs

  • Draft text, preferably with paragraph boundaries retained.
  • Genre profile, such as encyclopedia entry, news report, essay, marketing copy, or technical documentation.
  • Audience and desired voice.
  • Known sources, citations, quotations, and factual constraints.
  • Whether the user wants diagnosis only, suggested edits, or a review-ready report.

Processing rules

  1. Read the whole passage before flagging individual sentences.
  2. Group related signals and count repetition by passage, not by a universal threshold.
  3. Separate stylistic observations from factual and sourcing checks.
  4. Explain the missing substance behind each signal.
  5. Rewrite only when the intended meaning is clear and evidence supports the wording.
  6. Never infer authorship or assign a detector score as a verdict.
  7. Preserve the author’s stated genre and voice settings.
  8. Escalate ambiguous cases to a human.

Output contract

Require machine-readable fields or a consistent report layout. At minimum, return a list of possible signals with locations, a list of factual or sourcing questions, proposed revisions with reasons, and an “unresolved” section. Include a confidence label for each observation, but define confidence as confidence that a pattern is present—not confidence about who wrote the text.

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signal: 

Frequently Asked Questions

How many AI-writing signals should trigger a rewrite?

There is no universal cutoff. A single mark is usually weak evidence; repeated patterns combined with missing facts or attribution justify a closer review. Set thresholds by genre and use the agent’s explanation rather than a score alone.

Should an agent remove every em dash from a draft?

No. An em dash can be a deliberate and effective punctuation choice. Review frequency, placement, and sentence rhythm in context, then change it only when the punctuation obscures meaning or creates monotonous prose.

Can the skill add citations that are missing?

It should not invent citations or source details. The agent can identify a claim that needs support, suggest the kind of source to seek, and leave a clearly marked question for the author or editor.

How should an editor handle a revision that sounds unlike the author?

Reject or modify the suggestion and record the reason. Supplying a short voice sample or updating the genre profile can help the next pass, but factual accuracy and the author’s intent should take priority over making prose conform to a generic style.

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Is the Microsoft Wikipedia Human Style Writing skill ready to install without inspection?

The gallery lists it as version 0.1.0, added July 20, 2026, and presents it as a community-provided example. Inspect its instructions, permissions, update history, and output behavior before using it in a production workflow.

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