300+ comments. Same patterns. The rulebook the thread wrote, distilled into 24 checks and a Claude Code skill you can run on any URL.
Not a style guide. A list of failure modes every AI-built site is shipping by default. Everything in the lower tiers is downstream of these five.
Fail: poetic abstractions, "what we believe," category language. H1 over 7 words.
Fail: lead with who YOU are, the mechanism, or credentials. Outcome buried below the fold.
Fail: "trusted by industry leaders" without logos. Generic testimonials. No founder photo on a services site.
Fail: generic verbs and uncontextualized stats. "5x faster" without a sourced anchor.
Fail: two competing hero CTAs, "Submit" as verb, verb changes between sections.
Bounce risk lives in the first two seconds. If the engine reveals it, the visitor doesn't get it.
No opacity: 0 initial state on the hero <h1>. No char-stagger that leaves first letters invisible.
"I landed and saw 'E CONTROL OF YOUR BUSINESS'. First impressions count, and 'E CONTROL' looks like a typo."
Akki Shenoy · on aiwithdiego.com
A 3-second loading screen reads as "broken" before it reads as "loading." Above-fold needs headline + value + CTA in the initial paint.
Every background-image needs a paired background-color from the brand palette. Flat gray void with floating text is worse than an honest deep-navy hero.
Lazy-load the video only if the visitor scrolls. The ad-click visitor has a 5-second budget.
Failure modes are downstream. This is the positive checklist. The first 900px of vertical scroll, every conversion-optimized landing page has all five.
Star rating, named-client logos, or a specific user count, above or beside the headline.
What it is, plain English, largest type on the page.
The visitor's after-state in one sentence. "Get X without Y."
Auto-play demo, founder photo, product screenshot, or named-customer testimonial.
One brand-color button. First-person verb. "Reserve my spot."
Clean first paint still has to earn the click. Five signals visitors use to decide if you're real.
*.vercel.app, *.pages.dev, or *.netlify.app as canonical URLBuy the domain. Doubly true if you sell websites.
"You're a web design agency still on a Netlify subdomain. That's like a dentist with bad teeth."
Akki Shenoy · on itvisionsinc.netlify.app
Service businesses without a visible mark read as "still figuring it out."
For consultancies and freelance, people don't hire the brand. They hire you.
Logos with dead href="#" links are worse than no logos. Named people with attributed results close the page.
"Your 'Selected Work' row is eight logos with eight dead links. Broken case study links are worse than no case studies."
Daniel Quintana · on trendxmedia.com
A hero that tries to appeal to everyone appeals to no one. Confidence is a trust signal. So is willingness to lose half the room.
You're a web design agency still on a Netlify subdomain. That's like a dentist with bad teeth.
Every one reads as "ChatGPT after a Hormozi binge" to a working operator.
The single most reliable AI-generation tell on the modern web. Use commas, periods, colons, or restructure.
"I'd also get rid of the em dashes throughout the site to dodge AI generated radars."
Russ Gardner · on frictionandtoil.com
"Category of One." "The Unfair Advantage of Niche Depth." Plain English describing a real outcome lands harder.
"The copy reads like ChatGPT after a Hormozi binge. You don't need to wrap the niche in capital-letter slogans."
Daniel Quintana · on trendxmedia.com
Three stats in a row stop landing. Pick the two strongest for the homepage. Let the rest earn attention with structure variety.
Every paragraph past the third is read by 30% fewer people. The site is the hook, not the brochure.
Negation-then-assertion is a Claude/GPT signature. One is intentional, three is a fail. Just say Z.
"We are the leading X" puts the company in the hero seat. Invert: the visitor is the hero, you are the guide.
Rainbow gradient + pulsing dot + glassmorphism card is the Vercel-template look. Visitors pattern-match "another AI site" before reading.
The small details that separate "competent" from "amateur" on first impression.
Two competing buttons split the click. Demote one to a small text link beneath the primary.
Every layout starts full-bleed and only constrains at md: or lg:. Never the reverse.
Show after 300px of scroll. Hide when a modal opens. Never let it cover the content it's driving toward.
A full-screen modal demanding consent before the visitor sees the page hits "back button" hard.
One fix this week beats nine. The rubric forces the audit to terminate at one recommendation.
E1, E3, hero describes the company instead of the visitor. Fix today.
Missing F1-F5, outcome line buried, two competing CTAs. Fix this week.
Em dashes, X-not-Y, generic stats, stat-bombing, "Submit" verbs. Fix next iteration.
Capital slogans, adjective stacking, Hormozi voice, cheesy emphasis. Fix when surfaced.
Don Wilson's Conversion Doctor flow. The discipline forces the audit to terminate at one recommendation. Borrow this shape next time you give feedback.
"Strong dark editorial design, sharp three-pillar structure, premium voice."
"Sovereign defence is the highest-trust buying decision on the planet. Structure alone won't qualify you."
"Add a 4-6 logo bar with named clients above the hero. P0 against any other change."
"Now the visitor sees who else trusts you before they read what you sell."
All 24 checks packaged. Paste a URL. Get a scored audit with severity-ranked fixes and a drop-in community comment.
Paste the customize prompt into Claude Code, answer 7 questions, the rubric installs to ~/.claude/skills/site-rx/. Companion to /taste and /pilot from the Jack x Florian case study pack.
Public feedback from working operators is cheaper than a UX audit and harder to ignore than internal QA. The signal is strong because contributors have skin in the game.
Bake the 24 checks into the pipeline. Re-roast in 30 days. Watch the same critics nod.