Thirty-nine tells.

Inter as the whole system

Inter (or Roboto / Open Sans / Poppins / Lato / Nunito / Manrope / Plus Jakarta Sans) used for display and body alike. Voice-less grotesques chosen because they were already loaded.

Rule ahd/no-default-grotesque

Top raw offenders

@cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 3%

Regressed on compiled

gpt-5.4 0% → 10%

See sample → gpt-5.4 / compiled / sample-003

Purple-to-blue hero gradient

from-indigo-500 via-purple-500 to-pink-500, or the blurred blob variant pushed behind a glass panel.

Centred hero stack

Pill badge, 48–72px headline, 18px subhead, two CTAs (one filled, one ghost), max-w-3xl, everything centred.

Rounded-2xl on everything

Uniform medium radius across buttons, cards, inputs, avatars, modals, images. No contrast between sharp and soft.

Three equal feature cards

Icon in a rounded square, 20px title, three lines of description. Always three, always equal, always in a row.

Lucide icon in a rounded gradient tile

Zap for speed, Shield for security, Sparkles for AI. Always Lucide, always the most obvious icon, always in a gradient-tinted square.

Emoji bullets

✨ 🚀 ⚡ 🎯 attached to list items that are already trying too hard.

Glassmorphism panels everywhere

backdrop-blur-xl applied to every card, not just one surface. Frosted for no reason.

Rule ahd/no-indiscriminate-glass

Top raw offenders

gpt-5.4 7%

See sample → gpt-5.4 / raw / sample-009

#0a0a0a + one neon accent dark mode

Pure near-black background with a single high-chroma accent. No warm blacks, no paper-and-ink hierarchy.

Rule ahd/no-flat-dark-mode

Top raw offenders

gemini-3.1-pro-preview 30% · @cf/google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it 3% · @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 3%

Best reduction

gemini-3.1-pro-preview 30% → 0%

See sample → gemini-3.1-pro-preview / raw / sample-003

One shadow style on everything

The same soft beige drop shadow on every card. A shadow fingerprint, not a shadow system.

Gradient text on the word AI

Second place: gradient text on the word 'future'. Third: on both.

Faked testimonials with faked avatars

DiceBear silhouettes, five-star ratings, 'John D., CEO at Acme'. Three columns because four would look like a list.

Trust bar of unrelated logos

'Trusted by' over a row of desaturated SVGs of companies the product has no relationship with.

Bento grid of equal cells

Every cell a rounded-2xl card with a gradient border. Nothing dominant; every cell wants to be the hero.

Symmetry everywhere

Dead-centre compositions, equal gutters, cards of identical height. No tension, no reason to look anywhere first.

Border-radius without hierarchy

Buttons, cards and page wrapper all at 12px. The radius is a habit, not a decision.

Rule ahd/radius-hierarchy

Top raw offenders

@cf/mistralai/mistral-small-3.1-24b-instruct 100% · @cf/openai/gpt-oss-120b 90% · @cf/google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it 47%

Best reduction

claude-opus-4-7 43% → 0%

Regressed on compiled

@cf/meta/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct 10% → 83%

See sample → @cf/mistralai/mistral-small-3.1-24b-instruct / raw / sample-001

AI shimmer on non-loading surfaces

The silver diagonal sweep used for loading, new features and hero text alike.

Rule ahd/no-shimmer-decoration

Top raw offenders

claude-opus-4-7 33%

Best reduction

claude-opus-4-7 33% → 7%

See sample → claude-opus-4-7 / raw / sample-001

Fade-up-on-scroll on everything

Staggered 100ms on every block, regardless of intent. Motion as decoration rather than meaning.

The canonical gradient CTA

44px tall, 12px radius, gradient fill, trailing arrow, faint glow on hover. Copy reads 'Get started' or 'Try it free'.

Three-tier pricing with a 'Most Popular' middle

Tick-mark lists, a monthly/annual toggle, 'custom' on the third tier.

Four-column footer

Product, Company, Resources, Legal. Copyright, social icons in circles.

Scroll-jacked hero with a 3D blob

Usually the Spline default scene. Iridescent, inexplicable.

prefers-reduced-motion ignored

Motion nobody asked for and nobody can opt out of.

Rule ahd/respect-reduced-motion

Top raw offenders

@cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 7%

See sample → @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 / raw / sample-003

Median SaaS copy

'Build the future of X.' 'Ship faster.' 'Your AI-native Y.' The hedge 'may' used to avoid saying anything.

Rule ahd/no-slop-copy

Regressed on compiled

claude-opus-4-7 0% → 10%

See sample → claude-opus-4-7 / compiled / sample-012

Inline style='animation:...' on individual elements

An LLM shortcut for putting motion into an SVG or card without round-tripping to a stylesheet. Bypasses prefers-reduced-motion, bypasses design tokens, concentrates motion policy where linters miss it.

Rule ahd/no-inline-style-animation

Top raw offenders

@cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 3%

See sample → @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 / raw / sample-023

Corporate Memphis

Flat illustration, pastel palette, one accent colour, big-headed figures floating through space with no ground plane. Alegria and its descendants.

AI illustration glow

Marginally too smooth, slightly too symmetrical, subsurface scatter on everything, six fingers when you zoom in.

Iridescent 3D hero blob

Stripe reference lifted out of Stripe's reasons for using it.

Stock team-at-laptop photography

Diverse team looking at a laptop in a sunlit office. If the laptop is open to a dashboard the tell is complete.

Mesh gradients without counterforce

Stripe's grammar without Stripe's sentences. A mesh backdrop with no typographic anchor to answer it.

Lowercase grotesque + dot wordmark

productname. Every Y Combinator batch since 2021.

Monoline default icon set

Feather or Lucide at uniform 1.5px stroke with rounded caps. Zero visual authorship.

Two weights, no more

Regular and semibold. No thin, no black, no italic, no small caps, no tabular figures.

Rule ahd/weight-variety

Top raw offenders

gemini-3.1-pro-preview 97% · @cf/google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it 97% · @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 90%

Best reduction

claude-opus-4-7 47% → 3%

Regressed on compiled

@cf/qwen/qwen3-30b-a3b-fp8 13% → 87%

See sample → gemini-3.1-pro-preview / raw / sample-001

One line-height for everything

1.5 on body, headline, caption, button. One number does not fit all sizes.

Rule ahd/line-height-per-size

Top raw offenders

@cf/openai/gpt-oss-120b 100% · gemini-3.1-pro-preview 87% · @cf/google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it 87%

Best reduction

gemini-3.1-pro-preview 87% → 0%

Regressed on compiled

@cf/meta/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct 13% → 57%

See sample → @cf/openai/gpt-oss-120b / raw / sample-001

Measure blown out to 80–100ch

Text set for screens rather than reading.

Default tracking everywhere

No negative tracking on display sizes. No opened tracking on all-caps labels. Letters sit where the font delivered them.

Rule ahd/tracking-per-size

Top raw offenders

gpt-5.4 43%

Best reduction

gpt-5.4 43% → 0%

Regressed on compiled

@cf/mistralai/mistral-small-3.1-24b-instruct 0% → 40%

See sample → gpt-5.4 / raw / sample-002

Single typeface for the whole page

No pairing, no contrast of genre, no moment where type changes voice.

Rule ahd/require-type-pairing

Top raw offenders

@cf/meta/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct 100% · @cf/mistralai/mistral-small-3.1-24b-instruct 90% · @cf/qwen/qwen3-30b-a3b-fp8 83%

Best reduction

gemini-3.1-pro-preview 47% → 0%

See sample → @cf/meta/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct / raw / sample-001

Tailwind defaults applied flatly

4, 8, 16, 24, 32, 48, 64. No compressed rhythms. No dramatic jumps. Nothing to make one section feel different from another.

Single column, no grid

Elements stacked but not aligned to a shared structure. Every page a todo list.

Rule ahd/require-named-grid

Top raw offenders

@cf/mistralai/mistral-small-3.1-24b-instruct 100% · @cf/meta/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct 93% · @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 43%

Best reduction

@cf/meta/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct 93% → 0%

Regressed on compiled

@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast 10% → 17%

See sample → @cf/mistralai/mistral-small-3.1-24b-instruct / raw / sample-001