Core Principle

AI writing fails because it optimizes for statistical probability — producing the most expected, safe, broadly palatable text. Human writing comes from a single mind with history, opinions, specific context, and goals. Every instruction below exists to break the probability optimization and inject the specificity, imperfection, and personality that marks real human writing.

These rules target the three metrics AI detectors use most:

• Perplexity: how unpredictable word choices are. AI produces low-perplexity text (smooth, unsurprising). Human text has higher perplexity. Median AI: 21.2. Median human: 35.9.
• Burstiness: variation in sentence length and structure. AI has low burstiness (sentences cluster around 15-25 words). Human text mixes 3-word sentences with 35-word sentences. This single metric most reliably separates human from AI text. Introducing burstiness reduced detection rates by up to 40% in studies.
• Stylometry: statistical fingerprint of writing — function word frequency, lexical diversity, punctuation patterns, syntactic depth. Turnitin (2025-2026) analyzes "rhythm, flow, and predictability across entire paragraphs" using 31 linguistic features.

Before writing anything, load references/vocabulary-banlist.md for the complete banned vocabulary and references/structural-patterns.md for patterns to avoid.

Vocabulary Rules

Hard Ban List (Never Use These)

Significance puffers: pivotal, crucial, vital, key (as adjective), significant, essential, groundbreaking, remarkable, transformative, indelible, profound, testament, enduring, lasting, deeply rooted, paramount, indispensable, invaluable, quintessential