/ghost Claude Prompt — Strip Every AI Tell from Your Writing
/ghost is a Claude prompt prefix that removes the patterns AI writing tools fall into — em-dashes, balanced sentences, 'I hope this helps'. The output reads like a tired human typed it. Here's how it works.
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What /ghost actually does
/ghost is a Claude prompt prefix that removes the writing patterns AI tools fall into by default. You add it before any text you want rewritten — like /ghost [paste your paragraph] — and Claude rewrites the text without the tells that make AI-generated writing recognizable.
The output reads like a tired human typed it at 11pm on a Tuesday. Slightly imperfect rhythm, no flowery transitions, no "I hope this helps," no balanced sentence pairs, no em-dashes everywhere. Just text that doesn't trigger your brain's "this was written by ChatGPT" detector.
What gets stripped
If you've used Claude or ChatGPT for any length of time, you've started recognizing the AI rhythm. /ghost was built to remove these specific tells:
1. Em-dashes everywhere
Default Claude uses em-dashes constantly — like this — because it's been trained on writing that overuses them. Real humans use em-dashes once a paragraph, maybe. /ghost replaces most of them with commas, periods, or just removes them.
2. "I hope this helps" and similar closers
Claude likes wrapping up answers with friendly closers — "I hope this helps!", "Let me know if you have questions!", "Happy to clarify!". /ghost cuts them. The text just ends when it's done.
3. Balanced sentence rhythm
Default AI writing has this weird poetic rhythm where every paragraph alternates short and long sentences in a way that sounds polished but artificial. /ghost breaks the rhythm. You get text that flows like actual speech — uneven, occasionally clunky, but human.
4. "In conclusion" and signposting
"First, let me explain X. Next, we'll cover Y. Finally, we'll discuss Z. In conclusion..." Real writers don't talk like this. They just move forward. /ghost cuts the meta-commentary about what you're about to read.
5. "Furthermore," "Moreover," "Additionally,"
These transition words are fine in academic writing but they're a dead giveaway when used by AI. /ghost replaces them with simpler joins ("and", "also", or just a new sentence).
6. Three-item lists where two would do
Claude has a deep love for groups of three. "Powerful, flexible, and easy to use." "Efficient, reliable, and scalable." /ghost cuts the third item if it's just there for rhythm.
7. Hedging like "perhaps", "could", "might consider"
Default Claude hedges everything. /ghost removes the softeners and lets statements land directly.
Before/after example
Here's the same paragraph before and after /ghost.
Before (default Claude):
In today's competitive landscape, leveraging AI tools effectively can be a game-changer for solo founders. By utilizing platforms like Claude — particularly when paired with thoughtful prompt engineering — you can streamline your workflow, enhance productivity, and unlock new levels of creative output. The key is to start small, iterate often, and remain open to experimentation. I hope this gives you a clearer picture of how to get started!
After /ghost:
AI tools can save solo founders a ton of time, but only if you actually learn how to prompt them. Start with one tool. Run real tasks through it. Pay attention to what comes back. The people who get the most out of Claude aren't the ones who memorize prompt formulas — they're the ones who notice when the output is off and figure out why.
Same information. Same length. Completely different feel.
When to use /ghost
/ghost shines for any text where "sounds like a human" matters more than "sounds polished":
1. Cold emails and outreach
The biggest reason cold emails fail is they sound like every other AI-generated cold email. /ghost makes your outreach blend in with messages from real humans. Reply rates noticeably go up.
2. Slack messages and DMs
Nobody types "I hope this finds you well!" in Slack. /ghost text fits the medium — short, direct, slightly imperfect.
3. Blog posts (if you don't want them to feel AI-written)
More people are filtering out AI-written content because it's everywhere now. /ghost gets you past the filter. Your post doesn't prove it's human-written, but it doesn't immediately scream AI either.
4. Twitter/X posts
AI-generated tweets are the easiest to spot. They're too polished, too balanced, too "value-driven". /ghost makes a tweet feel like something you'd actually type with your thumbs while annoyed about something.
5. Customer support responses
Customers can tell when they're getting an AI response. /ghost makes the help feel personal, even when you used Claude to draft it.
When NOT to use /ghost
/ghost is the wrong tool for some writing:
Don't use it for technical documentation
Docs benefit from clarity, structure, and signposting — exactly the things /ghost strips out. You want "first, install X. Then run Y." in docs, not a casual flow.
Don't use it for legal text
Legal writing needs precision and standard phrasing. /ghost will make your terms of service sound informal in a way that might create ambiguity.
Don't use it for academic writing
The "polished AI rhythm" /ghost strips out is actually what academic writing wants. /ghost will make your paper sound like a Reddit post.
Don't use it on text you wrote yourself
/ghost is for rewriting AI output to sound more human. If you wrote the text yourself, running /ghost on it will inject fake roughness — small inconsistencies that don't reflect your voice — and make it feel less like you, not more.
/ghost combos that stack
/ghost gets more powerful when combined with other prefixes:
/ghost + /punch— humanize the writing AND make every sentence sharper. Best combo for cold emails./ghost + /trim— humanize AND cut the filler. Best for tightening Slack messages./ghost + /voice— humanize AND hold a specific tone for the whole conversation. Best for writing in your own voice./mirror + /ghost— clone someone else's voice from samples, then strip the AI tells from the result. The closest thing Claude has to a perfect ghostwriter mode.
Does /ghost actually fool AI detectors?
Mostly yes, but not always. /ghost reduces the obvious signals (sentence rhythm, transition words, em-dashes) but AI detectors look at deeper statistical patterns too — perplexity, burstiness, predictability of word choices. /ghost helps a lot with the surface-level tells but it's not a guaranteed bypass.
For most use cases (cold emails, Slack, casual blog posts), /ghost output passes any reader's smell test. For high-stakes use cases where being detected as AI matters (academic submissions, contracts), don't rely on it alone.
A small caveat
Here's the honest part: /ghost isn't an official Anthropic feature. It's a community-discovered convention that Claude has learned to recognize because so many people use it. There's no documentation on Anthropic's site that says /ghost does anything. It just works because the model has seen the pattern enough times to recognize the intent.
This means it could change. Future Claude versions might handle /ghost differently. The community pattern is what makes it work, not a hardcoded behavior. Most of the codes in the cheat sheet are like this — community conventions that Claude consistently picks up on.
Try it now
Open Claude. Pick any AI-generated paragraph you have lying around (a draft email, a blog intro, anything). Run it through this:
/ghost [paste your paragraph]
Compare the before and after. If the difference doesn't make you immediately want to send the after version, the prompt isn't right for this task. If it does — congratulations, you just unlocked one of the most useful prefixes in the cheat sheet.
Where to find more
/ghost is one of about 120 Claude prompt prefixes the community has discovered. The first 11 are free at clskills.in/prompts — including L99, PERSONA, OODA, /skeptic, and others.
If you want the full set with before/after examples for every code, when-NOT-to-use warnings, and the combos that turn 120 random prefixes into a daily-use system, the Claude Code Cheat Sheet is a one-time $5-$10 purchase with lifetime updates.
TL;DR
/ghost strips the AI tells from any text — em-dashes, balanced rhythm, "I hope this helps", three-item lists, hedging, polished transitions. The output reads like a tired human typed it.
Use it for: cold emails, Slack messages, casual blog posts, customer support replies, anything where "sounds human" beats "sounds polished".
Skip it for: technical docs, legal text, academic papers, text you wrote yourself.