tech
January 21, 2026
Wikipedia volunteers spent years cataloging AI tells. Now there's a plugin to avoid them.
The web’s best guide to spotting AI writing has become a manual for hiding it.
TL;DR
- Siqi Chen released an open-source plugin called "Humanizer" for Anthropic's Claude Code AI assistant.
- The plugin uses a list of 24 language and formatting patterns identified by Wikipedia editors as signs of AI writing.
- The "Humanizer" plugin aims to make AI-generated text sound more human and less like an AI model.
- The plugin is a "skill file" for Claude Code, formatted to be interpreted precisely by the AI model.
- Testing suggests the plugin makes AI output sound less precise and more casual, but may not improve factuality or could harm coding ability.
- Some instructions, like "have opinions," might be detrimental for tasks like writing technical documentation.
- The effectiveness of AI writing detection is questioned due to the similarity between human and AI writing styles and the ability to prompt AI to avoid certain patterns.