humanize
Make generated prose read like a real person wrote it, not AI. A shared rulebook of banned words, punctuation rules, and structural patterns that strip the AI "voice" from any free text — used when drafting open-ended application answers and cover letters. Truthful always; humanizing never adds a claim not grounded in the resume/profile.
npx skills add extrasmall0/dear-hiring-manager --skill humanize --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Humanize Apply to any free text we generate for the user: open-ended application answers ("Why this company?", custom essays) and cover letters. Goal: it reads like the candidate wrote it, plainly and specifically. Adapted from the public `blader/humanizer` rules. ## Punctuation - **No em-dashes or en-dashes (— –).** Use a period, comma, or colon. - **No parentheses for an aside or explanation.** Rewrite it as a plain sentence or a comma clause. - Straight quotes, not curly. Don't over-use bold. No emoji. No inline mini-lists inside a prose answer. ## Banned words / swaps - Drop: actually, additionally, furthermore, moreover, testament, landscape, showcasing, leverage, delve, robust, seamless, deeply, intricate, boasts. - Swap: "in order to" → "to"; "due to the fact that" → "because"; "serves as / features / boasts" → "is / has". - Cut hedging stacks: "could potentially possibly" → "may". - No clichés: "I'm passionate / excited…", "team player", "hit the ground running". ## Structure to avoid - Negative parallelism: "it's not just X, it's Y". - Automatic rule-of-three lists — use the natural number of items. - Synonym cycling — repeat the clearest term instead of swapping synonym
- Punctuation
- Banned words / swaps
- Structure to avoid
- Do
What does the humanize skill do?
Make generated prose read like a real person wrote it, not AI. A shared rulebook of banned words, punctuation rules, and structural patterns that strip the AI "voice" from any free text — used when drafting open-ended application answers and cover letters. Truthful always; humanizing never adds a claim not grounded in the resume/profile.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add extrasmall0/dear-hiring-manager --skill humanize --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From extrasmall0/dear-hiring-manager, a repository with 106 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.