Official agent skill

AI Tells

by JetBrains in JetBrains/youtrackdb

Reviews any draft for AI writing tells and produces a clean rewrite.

OfficialApache-2.0Auto-check passedWriting & Content

Install AI Tells

skills CLI
$ npx skills add JetBrains/youtrackdb --skill ai-tells -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install JetBrains/youtrackdb ai-tells --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JetBrains/youtrackdb.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/.claude/skills/ai-tells .claude/skills/ai-tells && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
ai-tells
GitHub stars
439
Token cost
~1.1k tokens
SKILL.md length
500 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
16
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
Apache-2.0

At a glance

Reviews any draft for AI writing tells and produces a clean rewrite.

  • Works in 2 steps: Audit. Flag every tell, name the… → Rewrite. Produce a clean version with…
  • The user asks to humanize
  • SKILL.md covers Modes, Catalogue lookups, Workflow and Output format, plus 2 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

AI Tells is an agent skill from JetBrains/youtrackdb, published by the product's own GitHub organization. Reviews any draft for AI writing tells and produces a clean rewrite. Catches structural fingerprints (negative parallelism like "It's not X, it's Y", bullet-everything, Title Case headings, adjective triads), analysis fingerprints (superficial -ing clauses, passive voice, vague attribution, hedge stacking), and tone fingerprints (throat-clearing, closing phrases like "In conclusion"). Use this skill whenever the user asks to humanize, de-AI, edit, polish, or sanity-check writing, including phrases like "does this…

Its SKILL.md is about 1.1k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Writing & Content, covering Humanizing AI text. It works with OpenAI. The repository describes itself as: YouTrackDB is a general-use object-oriented graph database with storage format native to handle graph relations. YouTrackDB supports Gremlin queries and ACID transactions. YTDB… The licence is Apache-2.0.

When your agent uses it

  • The user asks to humanize
  • Sanity-check writing
  • Including phrases like does this sound like ChatGPT
  • Make this less AI

Example prompts

  • “s not X, it”
  • “In conclusion”
  • “does this sound like ChatGPT”
  • “/ai-tells”

Workflow steps

2 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Audit. Flag every tell, name the category, suggest a replacement. No rewrite.
  2. Rewrite. Produce a clean version with all tells removed, preserving meaning, intent, and voice.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 78d0f15. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

    • en.wikipedia.org

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

AI Tells loads about 1.1k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 194 tokens; SKILL.md has 500 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~194
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.1k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from JetBrains/youtrackdb at commit 78d0f15, republished under its Apache-2.0 licence (© JetBrains). 500 words, ~1,078 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/ai-tells/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
ai-tells
description
Reviews any draft for AI writing tells and produces a clean rewrite. Catches structural fingerprints (negative parallelism like "It's not X, it's Y", bullet-everything, Title Case headings, adjective triads), analysis fingerprints (superficial -ing clauses, passive voice, vague attribution, hedge stacking), and tone fingerprints (throat-clearing, closing phrases like "In conclusion"). Use this skill whenever the user asks to humanize, de-AI, edit, polish, or sanity-check writing, including phrases like "does this sound like ChatGPT", "make this less AI", "humanize this", "edit this draft", "remove the AI smell", "is this AI-y", or "clean this up". Also trigger when the user pastes a draft and asks for feedback on the writing without naming AI specifically.

AI tells

A second-pass checker that flags AI writing tells in a draft and produces a clean rewrite. The catalogue is compressed from Wikipedia's "Signs of AI writing" page plus the goblin-era 2026 update.

Modes

Two modes:

  1. Audit. Flag every tell, name the category, suggest a replacement. No rewrite.
  2. Rewrite. Produce a clean version with all tells removed, preserving meaning, intent, and voice.

Default to audit + rewrite unless the user asks for one mode.

Catalogue lookups

All section references below live in .claude/output-styles/house-style.md. Walk these sections during Pass 1:

  • Structural fingerprints → house-style.md § Structural rules and § Banned sentence patterns
  • Tone fingerprints → sub-bullets in house-style.md § Banned sentence patterns (throat-clearing, closing phrases)
  • Punctuation fingerprints → house-style.md § Punctuation and typography
  • Content and analysis tells → house-style.md § Banned analysis patterns (includes the humanizer gap patterns)
  • Too-terse / under-orientation fingerprints (a claim stated without its mechanism, an unglossed project-specific entity, a causal chain folded into one clause) → house-style.md § Orientation
  • Plain-language fingerprints (an uncommon word where a common one fits, a long tangled sentence, an idiom or an ambiguous phrasal verb) → house-style.md § Plain language. This covers general-English clarity and word choice, including preferring the precise or common word.

Workflow

  1. Read the input fully. Don't skim. Density and combination matter more than any single tell.
  2. Pass 1, flag. Walk every category in ## Catalogue lookups. For each match, note the phrase, the category, and a proposed replacement.
  3. Pass 2, score. Estimate tells per 100 words. Above 3 is heavy. Above 6, recommend a rewrite from scratch rather than editing.
  4. Pass 3, rewrite. Maintain the writer's intent and voice. Don't substitute one set of AI tells for another.
  5. Pass 4, self-audit. Read the rewrite. Ask: what still feels AI? Fix it. Repeat until clean.

Apply during Pass 1: if a sentence still reads cleanly without its opener phrase, delete the phrase; if the sentence collapses without the opener (throat-clearing / closing — see house-style.md § Banned sentence patterns), delete the whole sentence.

Show full SKILL.md (177 more words)Show less

Output format

Return three blocks:

1. Audit. A bulleted list of every tell flagged. Format: [category] "exact phrase" → "proposed replacement".

2. Density score. "X tells per 100 words. Light / Moderate / Heavy / Unsalvageable."

3. Clean rewrite. The final version with all tells removed.

If the input scores Unsalvageable, skip the rewrite and tell the user the draft needs to be redone from a fresh outline rather than edited.

What this skill does not do

  • It does not detect whether a text was AI-generated. AI detectors are unreliable. This skill assumes the input may be AI-assisted and cleans it regardless.
  • It does not substitute for human editing. It catches surface tells. It cannot detect hollow thinking or missing voice. Those need a human pass.
  • It does not produce style. It produces absence of AI style. Pair it with a voice guide for the affirmative side.

Source and credit

Built by Kyle Balmer at AI with Kyle. MIT licensed. Last updated 2026-05-04. Free to use, share, and modify. If the list dates, update it.

© JetBrains, Apache-2.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in .claude/skills/ai-tells of JetBrains/youtrackdb.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 78d0f15

Compare with similar skills

AI Tells next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

AI Tells compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
AI Tells this skillJetBrains/youtrackdb439—~1.1kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Korean AI-Text Humanizerepoko77-ai/im-not-ai5.9k—~1.2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
ShuorenhuaMrGeDiao/shuorenhua2k—~757Automated safety check: PassMIT
Sloptrimseyedehsanhadi/sloptrim220—~5.2kAutomated safety check: NotesApache-2.0
Humanizer RuVladimir-Human/humanizer-ru126—~4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Anti Slop Writingadenaufal/anti-slop-writing147—~5.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Works with

Questions about AI Tells

What does AI Tells do?

Reviews any draft for AI writing tells and produces a clean rewrite. AI Tells is an agent skill from JetBrains/youtrackdb, published by the product's own GitHub organization. Reviews any draft for AI writing tells and produces a clean rewrite.

When should I use AI Tells?

AI Tells fits situations like: the user asks to humanize; sanity-check writing; including phrases like does this sound like ChatGPT; make this less AI.

How do I install AI Tells in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add JetBrains/youtrackdb --skill ai-tells -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (.claude/skills/ai-tells in JetBrains/youtrackdb) into .claude/skills/ai-tells in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install AI Tells in Codex?

Run `npx skills add JetBrains/youtrackdb --skill ai-tells -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (.claude/skills/ai-tells in JetBrains/youtrackdb) into .agents/skills/ai-tells in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use AI Tells in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add JetBrains/youtrackdb --skill ai-tells -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/ai-tells, .gemini/skills/ai-tells, .github/skills/ai-tells and .opencode/skills/ai-tells in your project.

What does AI Tells need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: AI Tells is instructions for the agent only.

Does AI Tells access the network?

SKILL.md names 1 domain. As links in the text: en.wikipedia.org. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is AI Tells safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does AI Tells use?

AI Tells is published under the Apache-2.0 licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does AI Tells use?

About 1.1k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 4.3k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to AI Tells?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with AI Tells: Korean AI-Text Humanizer (epoko77-ai/im-not-ai, 5.9k stars), Shuorenhua (MrGeDiao/shuorenhua, 2k stars), Sloptrim (seyedehsanhadi/sloptrim, 220 stars) and Humanizer Ru (Vladimir-Human/humanizer-ru, 126 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains AI Tells?

JetBrains (a GitHub organization, an official publisher) maintains it in JetBrains/youtrackdb, which has 439 GitHub stars. The repository holds 16 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 10, 2026.

Source: JetBrains/youtrackdb on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.