Slop Cop
Shares rank 2 of 4 grammar checkers by recommenders
Criticized more than recommended: critics say it flags too many false positives on ordinary writing; those who recommend it cite catching repetitive AI writing patterns and verbose comments in agent output.
9 people recommended Slop Cop in Hacker News comments, 4 had mixed feelings and 20 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
5 of the 9 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Slop Cop”.
Summary written by Claude from the comments below.
33 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- mixed feelings
- 4
- warn against or regret it
- 20
The record
Recommended in 4 of 12 months
In 6 different threads.
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 6 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- 5 of its 9 recommenders came from one threadNeeds half or less, not met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 35 of the 36 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Too many false positives on normal text
“there are simply too many false positives to make this and any similar tool have any usefulness beyond flagging the most obvious offenders”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “Inputting Japanese sentences of any length flags the whole sentence as "Dramatic Fragment: A standalone paragraph with ≤4 words”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “This causes very large blocks of my writing to be highlighted as "Hedge Stack" which isn't really helpful.”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” - Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop”
- Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop”
Strips personality and voice from writing
“These kinds of tools only narrow the scope of our expression and over time can suffocate the entire written language”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “most (all?) of the suggestions were just stripping the personality out of the writing”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “The feedback needs to go away or this thing is just exacerbating the problem.”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” Doesn't really detect AI, just grammar
“It makes the mistake of failing to identify why the AI 'style' feels wrong.”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “This doesn't detect AI slop. It's just a grammarly/copilot clone.”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “we can't trust the reliability of an AI detector”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” Website and UI look unfinished
“This website itself looks like it was generated by an LLM”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “Add Slop API Key' button is a missed opportunity here”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop”
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Catches LLM writing patterns and cliches
“I gave Slop Cop 775 words of an essay by Schopenhauer (translated into English) and got "15 patterns detected.”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “The West Forgot How to Make Things. Now It's Forgetting How to Code” “I like the effect of a multicolored slab of highlights calling out every LLM cliche in a passage”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “It caught a "Short-Hook Paragraph" and "Negation Pivot" and "Staccato Burst" in one text.”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” Cleans up verbose agent-written code comments
“I tell my agents to "run slopocop against the updated files before committing" and I am finally free of "load bearing", incredibly verbose comments”
Comment from 10 Aug 2026 in “Slopocop: ESLint for TypeScript Slop” “The insane comments are why I wrote slopocop - they were driving me crazy!”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?” Catchy, self-explanatory name
“Name seems fine. Catchy, and I knew what I did before opening link.”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “Catchy, rhymes, and immediately tells you what it does.”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” Useful for business and everyday writing
“I think this can be useful for business writing”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “this tool would help with those cases”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop”
Other grammar checkers people recommend
The three most recommended other grammar checkers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grammarly | 16 | 4 | 63 | 20% | 9 | — | — |
| Slop CopThis page | 9 | 4 | 20 | 31% | 4 | — | — |
| LanguageTool | 9 | 3 | 2 | 82% | 6 | — | — |
| Hemingway Editor | 6 | 0 | 1 | 86% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
35 of the 36 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“ranks much cleaner on slop-cop”
“Please don't be so hasty to discount the content.”
“The insane comments are why I wrote slopocop - they were driving me crazy!”
“I tell my agents to "run slopocop against the updated files before committing" and I am finally free of "load bearing", incredibly verbose comments”
“I gave Slop Cop 775 words of an essay by Schopenhauer (translated into English) and got "15 patterns detected.”
“yup same just tried it myself which an email I wrote.”
“It caught a "Short-Hook Paragraph" and "Negation Pivot" and "Staccato Burst" in one text.”
“These kinds of tools only narrow the scope of our expression and over time can suffocate the entire written language”
“found the results pretty mediocre”
“Nice work. But it only goes half way.”
“This is the Hemingway Editor by another name, and I have the same complaint about it”
“Catchy, rhymes, and immediately tells you what it does.”
“It seems to report Triple Construction based just on commas”
“this tool would help with those cases”
“A handy tool. Bookmarked.”
“This website itself looks like it was generated by an LLM”
“That’s just AI generated text with extra steps.”
“Welp, I guess it's back to school for mr. Asimov...”
“Add Slop API Key' button is a missed opportunity here”
“there are simply too many false positives to make this and any similar tool have any usefulness beyond flagging the most obvious offenders”
“Inputting Japanese sentences of any length flags the whole sentence as "Dramatic Fragment: A standalone paragraph with ≤4 words”
“they usually serve to win an argument, or confirm what you already believe”
“This causes very large blocks of my writing to be highlighted as "Hedge Stack" which isn't really helpful.”
“most (all?) of the suggestions were just stripping the personality out of the writing”
“17 patterns identified out of only 305 words”
“And it's unnecessarily rude.”
“I like the effect of a multicolored slab of highlights calling out every LLM cliche in a passage”
“Name seems fine. Catchy, and I knew what I did before opening link.”
“I think this can be useful for business writing”
“This is a genuinely useful tool”
“It makes the mistake of failing to identify why the AI 'style' feels wrong.”
“It detected 4 likely AI patterns, or once every 22 words.”
“This doesn't detect AI slop. It's just a grammarly/copilot clone.”
“The feedback needs to go away or this thing is just exacerbating the problem.”
“we can't trust the reliability of an AI detector”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.