linkedin-humanizer Checked

• **Vocabulary moved from a delete-list to density scoring.** The 2023-24 words (delve, tapestry, realm, journey) are decaying as humans avoid them [strong: Geng & Trotta 2025]. The durable 2026 markers are common words (significant, crucial, notably, comprehensive, insights, robust, leverage, foster, landscape, nuanced, streamline, elevate) plus grammar: nominalisations and "-ing" clause openers at 5.3x human rate [strong: Kobak Sci Adv 2025; Wu et al 2026; PNAS 2025]. AI vocabulary is also the one marker consistently reach-negative on LinkedIn in our own corpus (0.74-0.84 author-relative) [strong]. One marker in a paragraph is not a verdict. Three or more is.
• **Em dash is no longer a tell.** GPT-5.4 emits 1.43 per 1,000 words, below the 3.23 human baseline; 29% of human captions and 23% of top-creator LinkedIn posts in our corpus use one (author-relative ratio 1.09) [strong]. Zero em dashes is now its own tell (the writer is trying to look human). New rule: cap at about 1 per 100 words, replace excess with comma, colon, parentheses or a rewrite. Never a period.
• **Forced burstiness is the #1 2026 tell, not the fix.** LLM sentence-length variance is half of human [strong], but detectors do not score it, mechanical long/short alternation is a learnable humanizer fingerprint [weak: DAMAGE 2025], and on LinkedIn sentence-length variance is not an engagement lever in either direction (our corpus, n=397, within-creator: null to slightly negative) [strong]. "Short. Punchy. Done.", "No X. No Y. Just Z.", one-word paragraphs and "The result?" reveals are the current top tells. Pass 2 is now RHYTHM, not BREAK: fix machine-flat rhythm, never manufacture variance.
• **Rule of three is still a tell, at density.** Tricolon runs at 2x expert-human rate across 2026 frontier models [strong: arXiv 2604.19768]. Stacked, perfectly parallel triads and 3+ per post get scrubbed. One natural triple stays (26% of top human tweets have one).
• **Fingerprint injection was half wrong.** Named entities and concreteness are supported [strong: lower entity density in LLM text across 3 studies]; an odd-precision number with a referent in line 1 lifts likes 34% [vendor]. Bare numbers are not a discriminator, and inserted hedges and confessions backfire: performed hesitancy is 2x more common in LLM text than expert human text, and sincerity announcements ("let me be honest") are a named 2026 tell [strong: tropes.fyi false vulnerability; Schilke & Reimann 2025]. Pass 3 now asks for a flat, dated, uncomfortable fact instead.
• **Over-correction guard.** Humanizer output has its own fingerprint; "writing slightly worse on purpose" now reads as a tell [weak: DAMAGE 2025; slopotron]. Pass 4 checks whether Passes 1-3 introduced the very patterns they were meant to remove. Edits are proportional to real problems. When in doubt, leave it.

See sub-skills/rules-explainer.md for per-rule justification, defenses, and citations, and references/tier-rationale.md §V3 for the evidence.

When to use

• Before publishing any AI-drafted post or comment (rewrite mode)
• Pre-publish review of a finished draft (audit mode, see sub-skills/post-audit.md)
• When a draft feels off and you can't pinpoint why

Input

Any text (post, comment, reply, DM). Optional: target voice samples (past human posts by the user).

Output

• Rewritten text with AI tells removed
• Diff showing what changed and why
• Per-paragraph tell density (markers per paragraph; 3+ triggered a rewrite)
• Reader-read confidence: "reads human", "mixed", "reads AI" (this is a reader-tell estimate, not a detector score)
• Tier applied (which mode was used)

Modes

# Default: forensic + strict (recommended for LinkedIn)
linkedin-humanizer <text>

# Forensic only: minimum-touch, just kill the leakage
linkedin-humanizer --mode forensic <text>

# Strict: forensic + density-scored 2026 vocabulary, reveal bridges, staccato (the LinkedIn-default config)
linkedin-humanizer --mode strict <text>

# Aesthetic: strict + style rules (single natural triads, passive voice, defendable vocab)
# Use when target audience is Wikipedia editors / academic readers / AI-tell hunters
linkedin-humanizer --mode aesthetic <text>

# All: every rule. Maximum scrub. Will flatten literary writing and trip the Pass 4 guard.
linkedin-humanizer --mode all <text>

# Audit: detection-only pass-fail review. No rewrite.
# Runs the 2026 algorithm checklist: length, hook, CTA, structure, AI tells.
# Returns Blockers + Warnings + suggested fixes. See sub-skills/post-audit.md.
linkedin-humanizer --mode audit <text>

# Profile: build/update the user's Voice & Brand Profile so every writing
# skill drafts in their real voice. Learns from 3-6 pasted posts (portable, no
# token) or, if APIFY_TOKEN is set, from pulled activity. Writes
# ../../references/voice-profile.md. See sub-skills/voice-profile.md.
linkedin-humanizer --mode profile

The four passes

### Pass 1: SCRUB (score, then delete or replace)

The scrub pass applies tiered catalogs to delete or replace AI tells. The unit of judgement is the **paragraph, not the word**: count markers per paragraph, rewrite the paragraph at 3+, leave a single marker alone unless it is a reveal bridge or forensic leakage. Full regex source, replacement maps, and detection functions live in references/scrub-rules.md; load that file when actually executing the scrub.

**FORENSIC tier** (always on): real model leakage no human produces. Covers AI tool markers (oaicite, contentReference, turn0search0, attached_file, grok_card), knowledge-cutoff disclaimers ("As of my last update..."), phrasal templates ([Your Name], 2025-XX-XX), em dash density above 1 per 100 words, and outline-formula closers ("Despite its X... Looking ahead...").

**STRICT tier** (default on): what readers and the slop filter react to. Covers punctuation normalization (curly to straight quotes, -- to a comma or rewrite; excess em dashes to comma, colon or parentheses, never a period), the durable 2026 vocabulary set scored by density (significant, crucial, notably, particularly, comprehensive, insights, robust, leverage, foster, landscape, nuanced, multifaceted, holistic, streamline, elevate, empower), grammatical markers (nominalisations, sentence-opening "-ing" clauses), the 2026 LinkedIn layer (quietly, matters, compound, signal, "the work", "built different", load-bearing, "doing the heavy lifting", "let that sink in", "that's the real story"), reveal bridges measured re