Why slop detectors decay, and what we do about it

A signature-style detector that enumerates today's visual tells degrades over time. The generators that produce the slop are actively engineered to suppress the default look, and design standards push per-brand constraints into them. The exact fonts and gradients we flag today will not be the tells a year from now.

The absolute score is the hook, not the moat

A loud, free "how AI-generated does this look?" grader gets attention while the meme is hot. But the rule list is copyable in an afternoon, and the fashion it tracks will move. So the absolute score is acquisition, not a durable product.

The durable signal is per-site

The question that does not decay is relative: does this page honor its own declared design system? Point a scan at a site's DESIGN.md, the open token spec for colors, typography, radii, and components, and the scan reports drift: fonts in use that were never declared, CTA colors off the palette, radii off the scale. A bespoke site checked against its own tokens can never false-positive as slop, and the reference point is the customer's own system, not a global fashion that ages.

What this means for you

Use the free slop score to catch the obvious generated look. Use the system axis to keep a real design system honest as non-designers and coding agents keep shipping to it. One is the hook, the other is the thing worth monitoring.