{"slug": "show-hn-deslop-a-skill-that-turns-legalese-and-ai-slop-into-plain-english", "title": "Show HN: Deslop, a skill that turns legalese and AI slop into plain English", "summary": "A new open-source skill called Deslop, created by developer fayerman-source, teaches AI coding assistants and agentic frameworks such as Google Antigravity, Gemini CLI, and Claude Code to rewrite legalese and verbose AI-generated text into plain English. The skill applies plain-language legal drafting rules, including eliminating archaic terms, reducing sentence length to a 20-word average, and enforcing gender-neutral phrasing, and is available via the skills.sh registry or GitHub. It is designed to improve clarity in legal, technical, and general writing while reducing AI slop.", "body_md": "A portable skill for AI coding assistants and agentic frameworks (including **Google Antigravity**, **Gemini CLI**, **Claude Code**, and others). It teaches the agent to audit, draft, and rewrite text into plain English, for **legal writing** and general prose alike.\n\nIt applies the core rules of plain-language legal drafting (inspired by Bryan Garner's *Legal Writing in Plain English*) to turn dense legalese and verbose **AI slop** into clear, readable prose.\n\nNote\n\n**Universal Applicability & Slop Mitigation**: The skill guards essential legal terms of art, but its core rules (sentence architecture, active voice, omitting needless words) apply to **all professional, technical, and general writing** such as business memos, documentation, and correspondence. By enforcing direct, high-density language and banning boilerplate, it also cuts verbose, repetitive AI-generated text (\"AI slop\").\n\n**Legalese Buster**: Automatically identifies and replaces archaic terms (*aforesaid*,*hereinafter*,*said*,*such*) and redundant doublets/triplets (*null and void*,*give, devise, and bequeath*).**Sentence & S-V-O Optimization**: Reconstructs long, winding sentences to place subjects and verbs close together near the beginning, keeping sentence lengths to a readable 20-word average.**Nominalization De-bloater**: Converts buried verbs (like*make a decision*or*conduct an analysis of*) back into strong, active verbs (*decide*,*analyze*).**Deep Issue Framing**: Restructures complex legal issues into the clean \"premise-premise-question\" format (under 75 words) rather than convoluted \"Whether\" statements.**Rule Tabulation**: Formats dense multi-part legal rules, conditions, and lists into structured, parallel, and indented sub-items.** Double-Entry Number Clean-up**: Eliminates parenthetical repetition (e.g.,*three (3) days*->*3 days*or*three days*).**Gender-Neutral Drafting**: Replaces binary/clunky pronouns (*he or she*,*his or her*) with clean, inclusive, and modern gender-neutral phrasing.**Oxford Comma Enforcement**: Uses the serial comma to prevent list ambiguity.** Omitting Needless Words**: Strips redundant modifiers (e.g.,*completely finish*->*finish*), empty \"throat-clearing\" introductory phrases, and roundabout sentences to achieve maximum density.**ABA Publication Style Compliance**: Standardizes restrictive/nonrestrictive clauses (*that*vs.*which*), quotation punctuation, date/name formatting, U.S. abbreviations, and \"attorney fees\" terminology.**Structural Formatting**: Redesigns long, dense walls of legal text using informative headings and lists.\n\nThis skill uses the portable `SKILL.md`\n\n(Agent Skills) format, natively supported by **Antigravity CLI** (Google's successor to Gemini CLI), **Claude Code**, and **Codex CLI**. See the framework-specific instructions below.\n\nThe fastest path. Works across 20+ agents through the [skills.sh](https://skills.sh) registry:\n\n```\nnpx skills add fayerman-source/deslop\n```\n\nAntigravity CLI is Google's successor to Gemini CLI (which is being [sunset on June 18, 2026](https://developers.googleblog.com/an-important-update-transitioning-gemini-cli-to-antigravity-cli/)) and keeps native Agent Skills. It discovers a `SKILL.md`\n\nplaced in its skills directories; clone the repository into one:\n\n**Workspace-specific:**\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/fayerman-source/deslop.git .agents/skills/deslop\n```\n\n**Global (all workspaces):**\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/fayerman-source/deslop.git ~/.gemini/skills/deslop\n```\n\nThe skill is discovered automatically; restart the CLI or reload skills if it doesn't appear. Antigravity's native `install`\n\ncommand is in flux during the transition, so check the [official docs](https://antigravity.google/docs) for current syntax. The manual clone above works either way.\n\nLegacy: Gemini CLI (until June 18, 2026):Gemini CLI installs the same skill with`gemini skills install https://github.com/fayerman-source/deslop.git`\n\n(append`--scope workspace`\n\nfor project scope). After that date Gemini CLI remains only for Gemini Code Assist Standard/Enterprise license holders.\n\nClaude Code supports this skill natively through its [Agent Skills](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/skills) system. `SKILL.md`\n\nalready carries the required `name`\n\n/`description`\n\nfrontmatter. Clone the repository into a skills directory:\n\n**Personal (all projects):**\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/fayerman-source/deslop.git ~/.claude/skills/deslop\n```\n\n**Project-specific:**\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/fayerman-source/deslop.git .claude/skills/deslop\n```\n\nClaude Code auto-discovers the skill and applies it when relevant; you can also invoke it explicitly with `/deslop`\n\n.\n\nInside a session:Claude Code has no slash command to install a standalone skill from a URL. Either run the clone above, or ask Claude to do it for you (\"clone deslop into`~/.claude/skills`\n\n\"); restart Claude Code afterward so it picks up the new skill.\n\n**Alternative (without skills):** Append the contents of `SKILL.md`\n\nto a `CLAUDE.md`\n\nfile: your project-root `CLAUDE.md`\n\nfor a single project, or `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md`\n\nfor all projects. Claude Code loads both automatically as instructions.\n\nCodex CLI also supports native [Agent Skills](https://developers.openai.com/codex/skills). It scans `.agents/skills/`\n\ndirectories for a `SKILL.md`\n\nwith `name`\n\n/`description`\n\nfrontmatter (keep the frontmatter; Codex uses it for discovery). Clone into a skills directory:\n\n**Project-scoped:**\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/fayerman-source/deslop.git .agents/skills/deslop\n```\n\n**User-scoped (all repositories):**\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/fayerman-source/deslop.git ~/.agents/skills/deslop\n```\n\nInvoke it with `$deslop`\n\n, or let Codex activate it when the task matches the skill description. (Restart Codex if a freshly cloned skill doesn't appear.)\n\nInside a session:use the built-in`$skill-installer`\n\nskill: run`$skill-installer`\n\nand ask it to install deslop from the repository URL (it can pull skills from external repos); browse what's installed with`/skills`\n\n.\n\n**Alternative (always-on):** copy the body of `SKILL.md`\n\n(without the YAML frontmatter) into `AGENTS.md`\n\nat your repo root, or `~/.codex/AGENTS.md`\n\nfor global guidance. Codex reads these as standing instructions.\n\nTools without a skills system can still use these guidelines; load `SKILL.md`\n\nas the tool's instructions or rules file:\n\n**Aider:**`aider --read SKILL.md`\n\n(or add`read: SKILL.md`\n\nto`.aider.conf.yml`\n\n).**Cursor:** copy`SKILL.md`\n\ninto`.cursor/rules/`\n\n.**GitHub Copilot:** paste the rules into`.github/copilot-instructions.md`\n\n.\n\nOnce installed, your AI agent will automatically detect and apply the skill when you ask it to edit legal documents, or you can invoke it explicitly:\n\n-\n**Explicit Prompting**:*\"Review this contract clause using the*`deslop`\n\nskill.\"*\"Draft a brief response to this motion following the*`deslop`\n\nguidelines.\" -\n**Slash Commands**: If your agent supports slash commands in its TUI, you can trigger it directly:\n\n```\n/deslop Audit this NDA agreement: [paste agreement text]\n```\n\n-\n**What you get back**: an audit table with one row for each rule section (I–VI), so you can see what the agent checked, not only what it found. Sections with no violations say \"none found,\" and the Section III row lists what the agent kept verbatim. The rewrite follows the table.\n\nIn the event that the Party of the Second Part fails to make payment of any sum due hereunder subsequent to the receipt of written notice of default, the Party of the First Part may, at its option, declare this Agreement null and void and of no further force and effect, and may proceed to exercise any and all remedies available to it under the law.\n\nIf Jones fails to pay any amount due after receiving a written default notice, Smith may terminate this agreement and pursue any legal remedies.\n\nContributions are welcome: improve style guidance, expand rules, or add support for more agent frameworks. Open an issue or submit a pull request.\n\nDistributed under the MIT License. See `LICENSE`\n\nfor more information.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-deslop-a-skill-that-turns-legalese-and-ai-slop-into-plain-english", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/fayerman-source/deslop/", "published_at": "2026-09-01 02:03:52+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-01 02:21:51.612688+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools", "natural-language-processing"], "entities": ["Deslop", "fayerman-source", "Google Antigravity", "Gemini CLI", "Claude Code", "Bryan Garner"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-deslop-a-skill-that-turns-legalese-and-ai-slop-into-plain-english", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-deslop-a-skill-that-turns-legalese-and-ai-slop-into-plain-english.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-deslop-a-skill-that-turns-legalese-and-ai-slop-into-plain-english.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-deslop-a-skill-that-turns-legalese-and-ai-slop-into-plain-english.jsonld"}}