The Lab
Every guess in the game is a tiny experiment. The AI passages are drafted with different recipes — raw first drafts, edited drafts, persona-driven drafts. The fool rateis how often readers mistook a technique’s prose for human writing. Higher means more human-like.
The Lab is still warming up — 5 guessesso far. Per-technique fool-rates show up once there’s enough data to mean something (a few dozen guesses), so the early numbers don’t mislead.
Play a round → — or scroll down to read the exact prompts.
The recipes — and the exact prompts
Every AI passage in the game was made one of these ways. The prompts are shown verbatim — this is the part you can steal.
Seed draft (unedited AI)baseline
A passage written directly by a language model with no editing pipeline — the launch baseline the edited recipes are measured against.
The prompt
No single prompt. These launch passages were written directly by the model as plain genre prose — no scene beat, no editing recipe. They're the baseline the recipes above are measured against.
Raw single passediting-rounds
First draft, one model pass, zero editing. The unedited baseline.
The prompt
SYSTEM You are drafting a scene of genre fiction (classic adventure, fantasy, or science fiction). Write 180–240 words of narrative prose. Prose only — no headings, no stat blocks, no notes. Single draft, do not self-edit. USER Beat: (the scene below)
Mechanical sweepediting-rounds
Raw draft plus one mechanical pass that strips the common AI tells — em-dash overuse, filter words, "which meant", "the particular X of", "it was the kind of".
The prompt
Two steps. First a raw draft (the "Raw single pass" prompt on the scene below), then that draft is passed back through this editor: SYSTEM You are a line editor doing a MECHANICAL pass only. Remove common AI tells without changing the story or the meaning: overused em-dashes, filter words ("realized", "felt", "saw that", "noticed"), "which meant", "the particular X of", "it was the kind of", "a mix of X and Y". Keep length and events identical. Return only the edited prose. USER (the raw draft)Prose rewriteediting-rounds
Mechanical sweep plus a targeted prose rewrite that rebuilds the weakest sentences for rhythm, specificity, and show-don't-tell.
The prompt
Three steps: raw draft → mechanical sweep → this prose pass. SYSTEM You are a prose editor. Rewrite the weakest sentences for rhythm, concrete specificity, and show-don't-tell. Keep the same events and roughly the same length (180–240 words). Return only the edited prose. USER (the mechanically-swept draft)
Persona-forward draftpersona
Drafted in-character as a strong author persona, then lightly cleaned — betting that committed voice reads more human than careful correctness.
The prompt
SYSTEM Write AS a named genre stylist with a strong, idiosyncratic voice — short punchy sentences, dry wit, concrete sensory detail, a willingness to break rhythm for effect. Commit to voice over careful correctness. Write 180–240 words of narrative prose from the beat. Prose only. USER Beat: (the scene below)