Unslop

Rewrite text so it stops reading as machine-generated. Two halves, both required: cut the tells, then make sure something human is left.

Upstream pattern list: https://github.com/cursor/plugins/blob/main/pstack/skills/unslop/SKILL.md. This file keeps the repo-specific parts — what counts as prose here, what is data and must survive, and which surfaces are in scope.

Scope in this repo

In scope (the product's public face):

• README.md
• The docs/ pages listed in SECTIONS in packages/rove-docs/scripts/sync-docs.mjs (they publish to docs.rove.run)
• packages/rove-landing/** — English copy only
• Release notes and changeset bodies

Out of scope unless asked: docs/PLAN.md, HARNESS.md, ARCHITECTURE.md, DESIGN.md, RELEASING.md, AGENTS.md, and docs/design/**. Those are operator manuals for agents, not product surface.

Never rewrite these

The same character can be punctuation in one line and data in the next. Check before replacing:

• Table cells meaning "not applicable" — | copilot | — | ... | in ENGINES.md and SESSIONS.md. An em dash there is the value.
• Verbatim CLI output — e.g. the rove doctor sample in TROUBLESHOOTING.md. Quoting output means quoting it exactly.
• Code, including placeholders — ${ev.taskId ?? "—"} in PLUGIN-SDK.md.
• CSS/JS/HTML comments in landing files.
• Chinese copy. —— is correct CJK punctuation, not a tell. The landing page's zh i18n dictionary keeps its em dashes.
• A file's own established separator. PLUGIN-EVENTS.md uses · between a heading and its engine-support marks; match the file rather than inventing a new convention.

The patterns

Full list upstream. The ones that actually show up here, in order of volume:

1. Em dashes in prose. By far the biggest. Resolve each one per sentence into a period, comma, semicolon, colon, or parens. Do not global-replace with a single substitute — swapping every — for , just trades one tic for another, and swapping for parens trades it for a different one.
2. Inline-header lists. - **Label** — restatement of the label becomes - **Label.** <genuinely new detail>. If the text after the label only rephrases it, the line has no content; write the content.
3. Curly quotes → straight.
4. Filler. "simply", "in order to", "it is important to note that".
5. Fancy ways to say "is" — "serves as", "stands as", "boasts".
6. Title-case headings → sentence case. Proper nouns and defined product terms (Terminal Tab, Claude Code) stay capitalized.
7. Sentences that say nothing specific to this project. If the line could appear verbatim in another tool's docs, cut it.

Then add voice back: vary sentence length, state the tradeoff instead of listing both sides neutrally, and let a sentence be blunt.

Two failure modes this repo has actually hit

Both produced broken output that looked fine at a glance. Check for them.

Fragments from over-eager splitting. Turning X — y into X. y mid-clause leaves a sentence starting lowercase, or a verbless remainder. After editing, scan for it:

python3 - <<'PY'
import sys
for p in sys.argv[1:]:
    lines = open(p, encoding='utf-8').read().split('\n')
    for i in range(len(lines) - 1):
        a, b = lines[i], lines[i + 1]
        if a.rstrip().endswith('.') and b[:1].islower() and b.strip() \
           and not b.startswith(('|', '-', '*', '`', '#', ' ')):
            print(f"{p}:{i+1}: {a[-50:]} || {b[:50]}")
PY

Also read each rewritten sentence whole. The scan only catches line-broken prose, not a fragment that fits on one line.

Escaping breaks in i18n strings. The landing dictionaries are single-quoted JS. Replacing agent’s with a literal ' breaks the file. Always:

node --check packages/rove-landing/index.js
node --check packages/rove-landing/themes.js

Verify before claiming done

bun run lint
bun run --filter @sma1lboy/rove-docs build   # the docs-site CI gate
node --check packages/rove-landing/*.js

Then confirm the em dashes that remain are all data, not prose:

grep -rn "—" README.md docs/*.md packages/rove-landing/*.html

Every hit should be a table cell, CLI output, a code placeholder, a comment, or Chinese. If one is a sentence, it was missed.

Editing the landing page's English also means checking its Chinese counterpart still has the same keys:

node -e '
const s = require("fs").readFileSync("packages/rove-landing/index.js", "utf8")
const keys = (b) => new Set([...b.matchAll(/'"'"'([a-zA-Z0-9._]+)'"'"':/g)].map(m => m[1]))
const zh = keys(s.split("var en =")[0].split("var zh =")[1])
const en = keys(s.split("var en =")[1].split("var dicts")[0])
console.log("zh only:", [...zh].filter(k => !en.has(k)))
console.log("en only:", [...en].filter(k => !zh.has(k)))
'