I wrote a linter for AI-writing tells. It gave one of my own READMEs a C.
A pull request description came back from my coding agent and I read it the way the reviewer would. An em dash in the first sentence. A bold label on every bullet. Let me know if you need anything else at the bottom. I deleted all of it by hand, the same pass as the day before. Readers have learned these tells. Once they see one, they stop reading, whoever typed it. So I wrote the pass down as a…
I developed a linter for detecting AI-generated writing flaws. When I ran it against one of my own README files, it assigned it a failing grade of "F". The linter flagged numerous issues, including improper use of em dashes, inflated importance, and vague attributions. The score was calculated based on weighted findings per 1,000 words, with higher scores indicating greater AI-generated text presence.
The linter's rules were derived from Wikipedia's guidelines on AI writing and custom house rules created by the developer. The tool is open-source, with no dependencies and runs locally in the browser, ensuring user privacy. It can be integrated into Continuous Integration pipelines and provides feedback on pull request descriptions and Markdown files.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
